Whitelee Windfarm's Visitor Centre Manager, Simon, authors this month's guest blog, offering an insightful look into the heart of one of Scotland’s most significant green energy landmarks.

What is Whitelee Windfarm?  

Before taking up the post of Visitor Centre Manager, I wasn’t sure I could’ve answered that question but since starting in this role back in March, my understanding has deepened and my appreciation of what
ScottishPower Renewables’ Whitelee Windfarm is all about, has grown. 

To some, it is a ‘nice place to get a coffee’, to others, it is where they come to walk their dogs, go running or cycling, meet friends, or escape the house with the children!  For the people who work here, it is an important place for not only generating enough clean, green electricity to power over 350,000 homes (and where SPR’s Operations and Maintenance team operate their entire portfolio), but it’s also a place for teaching and educating the young and ‘young at heart’. ‘The Hub’ is always busy with workshops, classes, meetings, or craft-making, and there is always a buzz around the centre – especially during the holidays.

The team here in the Visitor Centre itself is one of the friendliest I have worked with, and a recent visitor commented that ‘what was evident was the sense of teamwork and camaraderie’.

A Multi-faceted Destination

The exhibition area in the Visitor Centre explains how a turbine works, how we generate energy from the wind, and how much energy we can utilise from the 215 turbines that line the landscape outside centre’s windows. But even this brightly coloured and fun exhibit cannot compete with the ‘Bus Tour’. The 40-minute guided tour of the windfarm on the electric bus is the highlight of the visit, and the driver/guides offer each visitor a fascinating insight into the UK’s largest onshore windfarm.

The team in the café serve each customer with a friendly smile along with their food, and it’s great that we can use so many local suppliers to provide our visitors with the best that this part of Scotland has to offer – meat, milk, cakes, ice-cream - all produced within a 20-mile radius of our centre.  Our ice cream supplier even suggests that they know which cow produced which flavour of ice cream, and I’m not sure you can get much more homemade than that!

The programme of events is varied too – we work in conjunction with the Ranger Service, which provide walks and activities for all ages in all weathers!  Our own team provides summer workshops, school workshops, evening events, and we offer themed birthday parties too. We also support the SPR team on their annual Whitelee Community Day on the windfarm as well as other seasonal events.

Reflecting on Whitelee

As I sit here today in the office with the door open and the gentle breeze blowing outside, the abundance of nature that surrounds the centre is evident and unlike most other offices that I have worked in, and after working in an underground location for over a year, to be able to see the sometimes four seasons in one day that we can experience here is a pleasure.  Whitelee seems to have its own microclimate.  It can be snowing here yet sunny in Kilmarnock, which is only 8 miles away.  In the morning, you can sometimes barely see the magnificent turbines, and by afternoon, you need your sunglasses and, in my case, a good dollop of suncream on my head!  As the clouds move past the window, I chuckle to myself that six months ago that would have meant nothing more than the wind was building up and more than likely a storm was on the way. But today, my first thought is ‘good, the turbines will be spinning for our visitors’.

Before I started, I’m not sure I would have been able to describe Whitelee Windfarm, and I’m not sure I could use one word to do that now.  It is too much to distil into a word, too important to the visitors to label it as one thing, for fear of upsetting the other users of the facility.  For ScottishPower Renewables, it is an important exemplar of the great work that they are doing to build a cleaner, greener future for all…and for Glasgow Science Centre it is a key outlet for learning and knowledge sharing.  

 For me, it is a lovely place to come and work.

 And for all of us, it’s absolutely more than just a windfarm.