Description
Positioned 300 metres (985 feet) above sea level and 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) outside Glasgow, Scotland’s largest city, the wind farm has over half a million people living within a 30 km radius. This makes Whitelee one of the first large-scale wind farms to be developed close to a centre of population. In May 2009, Whitelee was officially opened to the public by Alex Salmond MSP, First Minister for Scotland. However, Whitelee was generating power long before this with the first phase of the wind farm supplying power to the electricity grid in January 2008.
In May 2009, the Scottish Government granted permission for an extension to the wind farm that will produce up to a further 130 megawatts of power, which would increase the total generating capacity of Whitelee to 452 MW. There is also the potential to increase the generating capacity once again by 140 megawatts. This would give Whitelee the potential to generate almost 600 megawatts of renewable energy.
On 19 March 2010 a blade snapped off a turbine, resulting in temporary suspension of operations until safety checks were completed. Following the accident Keith Anderson, managing director of ScottishPower Renewables, said: "This type of incident is exceptionally rare and highly unusual."
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