South Kyle Wind Farm, Dalmellington

Client: Vattenfall

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We were the Principal Contractor for the Balance of Plant, Design and Build of the civils and electrical works for a 226MW wind farm, located near Dalmellington, East Ayrshire. The works included earthworks, 50 no. wind turbine generator/turbine (4.8MW Nordex turbines) foundations and associated large hard standing/erection platforms, on-site access roads with multiple bridges/culverts over watercourses (including a new road with 32m-span steel/reinforced concrete composite bridge, drainage (temporary and permanent), cable tracks including the installation of underground 132kV/33kV cables, comms and earth cables, site compounds, several temporary compounds, borrow pits, public road improvements including specialist strengthening of two existing bridges on the A713, and landscaping including peat restoration.

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Principal Elements

• Rock (from 8 onsite quarries) 850,000m3

• Site roads 48km

• Peat management 265,000m3

• Array cabling 70km

• Site-batch concrete 28,000m3

• 132kV grid connection cable 4km

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Points of Interest

• Aggregates obtained from onsite quarries, minimising carbon footprint

• Temporary purpose-built batching plant established onsite for flexible access to concrete, minimising carbon footprint and haulage interface with the local community

• New tracks laid and temporary bridges constructed over the Prickeny Burn and Pochriegavin Burn to enable movement across site without detouring via the A713 and B741

• Interface with forestry contractors during extraction of 150,000 tonnes of timber throughout the project

• Interface with other major energy infrastructure projects such as the SWS Overhead cable route

• A virtual ‘Meet the Buyer’ event was held, attracting an online audience of over 600 businesses

• Other Community Benefits events include a ‘Stop Littering’ poster competition for Ayrshire primary schools pupils, installation of a pathway at Bellsbank Primary School, speed monitoring of site traffic in the local villages and donations of drawing paper to Bellsbank Early Childhood Centre

• We re-used 265,000m3 of peat on site. The original blanket bog had been disturbed through forestry plantations by ploughing, mounding and drainage. We worked with the Client, Vattenfall to re-use the peat in areas which were of low ecological value. There were opportunities at the edges of roads and hardstandings where we continued the restoration into the felled areas. The new habitat formed aims to improve the biodiversity of the site by removing forest mounding and removing forest drainage where appropriate.