Repower up

Scottish Power has this month begun replacing wind turbines at the country’s oldest commercial wind farm. Writing for Utility Week, Scottish Power Renewables CEO Charlie Jordan explains why repowering old wind farms will be a crucial part of reaching net zero. He also stresses why we need to be able to do it faster than current legislation allows.

In just seven years’ time, Scotland has committed to reducing carbon emissions by 75% and more than doubling its renewable energy production.

They’re bold targets as the world marches towards a net zero future which, without serious actions, hangs in the balance.

At Scottish Power, our renewables business is forging ahead with ensuring we have the best possible chance.

Building new wind farms, and maximising existing sites, is key if we want to supercharge the country’s 13.4GW of renewable electricity generation capacity with the 20GW of additional low-cost renewable electricity capacity by the Scottish Government’s 2030 target.

No mean feat but I’m confident if we can work at pace and unlock challenges around planning and investment, we can harness Scotland’s true power – we are the windiest country in Europe after all.

This month I witnessed turbines start to come down at our Hagshaw Hill wind farm in South Lanarkshire after 30 years of delivering green electricity for the community.

It was Scotland’s first commercial wind farm and has generated over 895MWh since 1995 – but technology has advanced to the stage where its ready to be supercharged.

Work will continue this year and into next, but a fully repowered site will produce five times the power of the old site with just over half the number of turbines – powering almost half the homes in South Lanarkshire (around 61,000).

In fact, three of the 14 new, more powerful, and efficient machines we’re installing will generate the same power as all 26 original turbines we’re now removing.

The Hagshaw Hill repowering project is part of Scottish Power Renewables’ wider ambition to maximise the efficiency of the existing sites we know can deliver the green, zero carbon electricity we need to reach net zero.

Building new renewable generation, whether onshore or offshore wind, is critical if Scotland is to reach its 2030 goal – but repowering is a crucial part of the mix, and we need to be able to do it faster than current legislation allows because we as a sector can’t do it alone.

We need the regulatory environment to support it, we need to encourage investment across the sector, we need to foster the evolving skillsets needed in our industry, to harness the power of the latest technology, and crucially…we need the planning framework to enable it all.

Planning should be an enabler of deploying the infrastructure required to meet societal needs and to address the critical need for a decarbonised power sector. Planning policies need to provide clear direction on how balanced planning judgements are reached, to ensure consistency, transparency and predictability in order to underpin supportive investor confidence and to drive engagement with more efficient processes between public and private sector as well as local community needs.

We know that planning teams are already under immense pressure, so we need to consider how we can support them e.g., via streamlined processes for repowering sites which have already been through the full planning process when first consented.

We know these sites; we know how to look after them and we know how much more they can deliver for the UK if we can repower them fast enough.