Whitelee Wind Farm wins 'Best Renewable Project' award
Balfour Beatty Engineering Services is pleased to announce that the ScottishPower Renewables Whitelee Wind Farm was named the ‘Best Renewable Project’ at the Scottish Renewables Green Energy Awards 2009 in Edinburgh on 3 December 2009.
The project won this award as a result of overcoming radar, environmental and supply chain issues in order to create the largest wind farm in Europe. The award is for either a renewable project in Scotland established in the last three years that is producing renewable energy and offsetting carbon emissions, or an initiative that is offering support to the wider renewables industry.
Located south of Glasgow and covering an area of 6,000 hectares, the project was built on vast areas of deep peat, commercial forestry and approximately 40% of the site is within a Scottish Water catchment area.
Whitelee is currently the largest onshore wind farm in Europe, with 140 Siemens 2.3MW turbines generating a total capacity of 322MW which is enough to meet the needs of 180,000 homes, and potentially offsetting more than 500,000 tonnes of carbon emissions per year.
Two further extensions of 36 and 39 turbines have been consented which, once installed, will take the generation output of the wind farm to approximately 500MW. Balfour Beatty Engineering Services designed and built the electrical systems for the project as part of its wider joint venture scope to deliver the entire balance of plant with Morrison Construction.
BBES’s scope of work was valued at £24m and was completed ahead of schedule taking 36 months to finish and our efforts on this project have helped receive two further projects with ScottishPower Renewables. Well done to the many staff and operatives who contributed to this success.
Posted: Tuesday 26 January 2010