ScottishPower rebuilds UK's largest wind farm with fewer but bigger turbines

The Whitelee Wind Farm on Eaglesham Moor in East Renfrewshire. The Scottish Governments wants to speed up the process for approving electricity infrastructure projects (Picture: John Devlin)

placeholder image — The Whitelee Wind Farm on Eaglesham Moor in East Renfrewshire. The Scottish Governments wants to speed up the process for approving electricity infrastructure projects (Picture: John Devlin)

The site was first opened in 2009 and has doubled in size and welcome a new visitor centre and paths for walkers and cyclists.

The UK’s biggest onshore wind farm will be taken down and rebuilt with fewer but larger turbines, developers have said.

Whitelee Windfarm is home to 215 turbines that stretch across moorland near Eaglesham, south of Glasgow.

One of the largest wind farms in Europe, the development has been producing electricity for about 20 years. However the turbines are reaching their end of life and need to be replaced.

The developer, ScottishPower, which is owned by Iberdrola, a major Spanish multinational energy company, said the existing turbines will be replaced in three phases with around 124, each of which will be about 110m (361ft) taller.

The £1.5 billion "repowering" project will take 10 years to complete and will double the electricity output from 539 megawatts to 1 gigawatt, which is enough to power about 650,000 homes.

Whitelee will be the biggest wind farm to have all its turbines replaced, of which 99 per cent will be recycled, the company said.

The site currently covers an area of approximately 83km2 and straddles East Renfrewshire, East Ayrshire and South Lanarkshire council areas. The plans, which include a new substation, have now been lodged with the Scottish Government’s Energy Consents Unit and will be published online in the coming weeks.

A planning application is set to be submitted at the end of next year. It is anticipated that the upgrade will be fully operational by 2035.

Scottish Power Renewables chief executive, Charlie Jordan, said the company was planning for when the turbines reached the end of their natural lifespan.

"At this critical moment in the push for home-grown clean, green energy, it's important we don't go in reverse and lose the clean capacity that's been hard-earned over the last two decades as it comes to the end of its operational life," he said.

Whitelee initially consisted of 140 turbines when it was first opened by then first minister Alex Salmond in 2009. It was the largest wind farm in Europe at the time and has since grown to almost double the size.

In that time, Eaglesham Moor has also seen footpaths and tracks develop for walkers and cyclists to venture through the turbines.

The site has also been home to a visitor centre for the last 17 years which features exhibits on renewable energy, a café, and guided bus tours that take visitors directly up to the turbines.

Scottish Power said its three-phase approach to repowering meant the site could remain accessible to the hundreds of thousands of visitors to the area during the rebuild.

The announcement came as the energy giant revealed that recent investment in infrastructure helped drive a jump in profits over the past half year.

Scottish Power said earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (Ebitda) rose by 17 per cent to £1.7 billion in the first six months of 2026, compared with a year earlier.The group said this came on the back of investment into its grid and clean power assets, including its takeover of Electricity North West.

This was also supported by a stronger output from its renewables division and the sale of some assets, including its metering business.Nevertheless, Scottish Power also reported that underlying profits from its retail business decreased due to a fall in margins, lower energy use and rising policy costs linked to “energy efficiency schemes”.