World Wind Watch | Green Energy News

July 7, 2002 – Vol.7 No.15

WORLD WIND WATCH.

ScottishPower commissioned this week what is touted to be the UK’s most efficient wind farm - the 30 megawatt, 46 turbine project at Bein an Tuiric on the Kintyre peninsula in Argyll, Scotland. Yet news reports and press releases regarding the project omitted just how efficient the wind farm, built at 1489 feet (454 meters) above sea level on top of the highest hill in Kintyre, is.

Fortunately, nearby is the Deucheran Hill Wind Farm operated by PowerGen Renewables. Built at 1053 feet (329 meters) average wind speed at that site is about 20 miles per hour (9 meters per second). Very windy. Generally speaking the higher the elevation the windier, so Bein an Tuiric could, without question, easily be the UK’s most efficient wind power producer.

ScottishPower plans to build two more farms in the windswept region and has long term plans to have 785 megawatts of wind energy online by 2010. The Bein an Tuiric project is the company’s 11th in the UK. Visit ScottishPower at http://www.scottishpower.co.uk/ PowerGen Renewables at http://www.powergenrenewables.com/ .