Following 28 years of production, Scotland’s oldest commercial wind farm is set to be repowered by ScottishPower.
Operational since 1995, ScottishPower Renewables’ Hagshaw Hill windfarm in South Lanarkshire has been generating more than 895MWh over its nearly 30-year life span.
The 16MW site is about to be ‘supercharged’ as it is set to welcome 14 new wind turbines with a combined capacity of over 79MW.
Once complete, the wind farm will be capable of producing around five times the amount of clean, green energy than before, from just over half the number of turbines.
Maintaining ‘over 100 jobs’
At its peak, the project is set to maintain over 100 jobs with more indirect opportunities for supply chain firms during decommissioning and construction.
Work is currently underway to disassemble the turbines and prepare the land, with Scottish firm Forsyth of Denny winning the decommissioning contract.
The decommissioning process will continue over the summer and into early autumn, and the delivery of the first new turbine components to the site is expected in May 2024.
© Supplied by ScottishPower RenewaScottishPower says that the project will be fully operational by ‘early 2025’.
The firm says that the project to maximise efficiency at the nearly 30-year-old site is part of its ambition to help meet the UK’s Net Zero targets.
Barry Carruthers, onshore managing director at ScottishPower Renewables, said: “We’ve worked in this area for almost 30 years, we know how good this site is and now we’ll be able to produce enough electricity to power almost 61,000 homes each year – almost half the homes in South Lanarkshire.
© Supplied by ScottishPower“Repowering is critical to achieving Net Zero ambitions, but we need to be able to do it faster than current legislation allows.
“We know these sites, we know how to look after them and we know how much more they can deliver for the UK if we can repower them fast enough.”
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