Whitelee Extension to Boost Output by One Third

French energy company, Alstom will build a 217-megawatt extension to the Whitelee wind farm in Scotland, about nine miles outside of Glasgow. The extension will increase Whitelee’s output by one-third.

The contract was awarded to Alstom by Scottish Power Renewables, a subsidiary of Spanish Iberdrola Renovables.

Alstom is responsible for supply, transportation, installation, commissioning, operation and maintenance for the extension, according to a company statement.

The extension will consist of a combination of Alstom wind turbines: 69 ECO 100 turbines at three megawatts each and six ECO 74 turbines at 1.67 megawatts each. This new portion of Whitelee is scheduled to be operational in May 2012. This will be the first large scale project for Alstom’s ECO 100 units.

Whitelee Wind Farm is Europe’s largest onshore wind farm with 140 Siemens wind turbines and a total capacity of 322 megawatts.

The U.K. aims to generate up to 35 per cent of its electricity from renewable sources with as much as 230 gigawatts of installed capacity of wind power by 2020, a three-fold increase over today’s 74.8 gigawatts, according to the European Wind Energy Association.