Where is Whitelee Wind Farm?

Whitelee Wind Farm is in Central Scotland, in the United Kingdom — coordinates 55.6728°, -4.2856°.

Farms (open to visitors) · Central Scotland

Whitelee Wind Farm

Spine road, Whitelee - geograph.org.uk - 4394935 — Richard Webb — CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons licence

Plan your visit

Typical visit: 2 h–4 h

Family-friendly

Whitelee Wind Farm is a windfarm on the Eaglesham moor in Scotland. The main visitor centre is located in East Renfrewshire, but the majority of turbines are located in East Ayrshire and South Lanarkshire. It is the largest on-shore wind farm in the United Kingdom with 215 Siemens and Alstom wind turbines and a total capacity of 539 megawatts (MW), with the average of 2.5 MW per turbine. Whitelee was developed and is operated by ScottishPower Renewables, which is part of the Spanish company Iberdrola. The Scottish government had a target of generating 31% of Scotland's electricity from renewable energy by 2011 and 100% by 2020. The majority of this is likely to come from wind power.

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From the Wikipedia article

Excerpt from Wikipedia under CC BY-SA 4.0. See the source article linked in Sources below.

Background

Description

Positioned 300 metres (985 feet) above sea level and 15 km outside Glasgow, Scotland's largest city, the wind farm has over half a million people living within a 30 km radius, which 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 more than a year before this with the first phase of the wind farm supplying power to the electricity grid in January 2008. In late 2018 the BBC's Weather World program visited the farm on a record breaking day. Control Centre Manager Mark Gailey stated that the…

Visiting

Whitelee has become an eco-tourist attraction aided by an on site visitor centre. The visitor centre is host to an interactive exhibition room, cafe, shop and education hub. It was officially opened to the public in September 2009. The visitor centre also gives access to a network of over 90 km of paths for cyclists, ramblers and horse riders. The visitor centre is managed by Glasgow Science Centre and offers activities for education and community groups. also works to encourage and assist community and charity organisations to use of access opportunities within the wind farm for fundraising and charity events. The Ranger Service forms part of the Whitelee Access Planning Group which is…

Sourced from Wikipedia under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Coordinates: 55.6728, -4.2856
Address: Main entrance on Moor Rd, near Eaglesham, East Renfrewshire. Extends into East Ayrshire and South Lanarkshire.
Official site: www.east-ayrshire.gov.uk