Twenty-six turbines on a ridge two other developers had walked away from, now powering 240,000 homes.
Onshore wind
Highland ridge, Scotland
Online 2024
Capacity
312 MW
Turbines
26
Homes powered
240,000
The story
How we planned and built it
The challenge
Two developers had surveyed this ridge and walked away. The wind was strong, but gusty, and the grid connection sat twelve kilometres away across a protected glen.
Locals worried about noise and the view from the glen, and the nearest road could not take turbine blades longer than 60 metres.
Our approach
We ran met masts and lidar for twenty months, re-sited six turbines to calmer pockets of the ridge and routed the cable along an existing forestry track to avoid the glen.
Every turbine spot was tested against noise limits for the nearest homes, and blades arrived on a new temporary access track built and later removed by our team.
The result
Kestrel Moor came online four months early and now runs at a 38 percent capacity factor, one of the highest onshore sites in the region.
The site now feeds a community fund worth around 600,000 pounds a year, paying for village heat pumps and a new school minibus.
Key facts
26 turbines of 4.2 MW each, with a 155 metre tip height
Grid connection at 132 kV with 12 km of buried cable
Built in 16 months by 180 local workers on site
Community fund of around 600,000 pounds a year
They listened to the village from day one. Two turbines moved because we asked them to, and the fund now heats our school.
MT
Morag Tulloch
Chair, Glen Kestrel Council
