EDF Renewables has appointed I & H Brown to deliver the design and build of the civil balance of plant works for the 20-turbine Stranoch Wind Farm.

Works commenced on Monday the 27th May, and we are underway constructing the first section of access road. The Stranoch Wind Farm site is located in Dumfries and Galloway, between New Luce and Barrhill.

The project scope involves the establishment, operation, and reinstatement of on-site borrow pits, the construction of approximately 14km of new site tracks, WTG base foundations, crane hard standings, control building, SPEN platform, and all civil works associated with cabling on site. The main construction period will be followed by an extended PC role to supervise the installation and commissioning of the wind turbines.

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A crucial step in the pre-construction phase, was to carry out an extensive UXO survey across the full site providing reassurance of no risk of UXO for construction works, as the site was historically used as an MOD firing range. The remoteness of the location will undoubtedly pose logistical issues as travel up to the works area from the public road is time-consuming.

All twenty wind turbines will range in various sizes of up to 150m in height that will have foundation concrete volumes of approximately 700m3 and on-site batching will be implemented to supply the large volumes of concrete. The finished project will have a generation capacity of 84MW.

A proportion of the wind farm's electricity generation will be bought by major retailer Tesco, with the clean energy due to power the equivalent of more than 80 average sized supermarkets for a year. Another proportion will be bought by BAE Systems and provide clean energy to power around 40 per cent of its current UK energy demand, supporting major technology programmes including the production of Type 26 frigates for the Royal Navy in Glasgow.

Construction of the Stranoch Wind Farm is considered a key milestone in accelerating Scotland's journey to a net zero future.