Expansion of wind farm welcomed

Environmentalists have welcomed the expansion of Europe's largest onshore wind farm.

ScottishPower Renewables is to add an extra 75 turbines to its Whitelee wind farm on Eaglesham Moor south of Glasgow by 2012, with the project providing up to 200 jobs.

This will boost the number of turbines to 215, creating enough electricity to power around 300,000 homes, compared to about 180,000 at the moment.

Capacity will increase from 322 megawatts (MW) to 539MW using technology by energy infrastructure firm Alstom.

Simon Christian, UK director of ScottishPower Renewables, said: "The agreement with Alstom means that work will start shortly on this major extension at Whitelee wind farm and we expect to be generating electricity by 2012.

"Whitelee wind farm is already the largest onshore wind farm in Europe and this extension, pushing the overall capacity to 539MW, will make it one of the largest in the world.

"The extension project will provide up to 200 jobs and, when complete, the overall windfarm will be capable of producing enough electricity to power over 300,000 homes."

Whitelee wind farm began producing electricity in late 2008 and was given planning permission to expand last year.

Over the next two years the company will install 69 Alstom ECO 100 wind turbines with a 3MW capacity and six ECO 74 turbines with 1.67MW capacity each.