The repowering of the Hagshaw Hill wind farm is a good opportunity to reflect on the consenting issues around repowering.
“Supercharged”
A key benefit of repowering is delivery of vastly increased renewable energy generation capacity. Hagshaw Hill is being described as “supercharged” – delivering five times more power than the original wind farm, but with almost half the number of turbines.
The increase is achieved by replacing the original wind turbines, approximately 30 years old, with modern, more efficient machines.
This blog comments on consenting issues - our previous blog mentions other legal points for a developer to consider should they wish to repower or extend the life of a wind farm.
Consenting
The planning system has always favoured the re-use of previously developed land (brownfield land), rather than undeveloped land (greenfield sites). However, rather than expressing a preference for repowering, the National Planning Framework 4 gives general support to all wind farm development “including repowering".
Planning risk
For a repowering project, the planning/ consenting risk is reduced by two key factors:
- permission for the original wind farm shows that the principle of wind farm development on the site is acceptable.
- NPF4 introduced much more supportive renewable energy policies
Despite those factors, consenting a repowering project is not straightforward. The proposed new wind farm has to be assessed on its merits. The use of taller turbines is likely to change the nature of the impacts.
Often there will have been changes in the locality. In some instances other wind farms will have been constructed in the area, meaning that the landscape and visual impact of the repowered wind farm on those other wind farms will need to be taken into account. Development frameworks are being prepared for some of these wind farm clusters - eg. the Hagshaw energy cluster.
Account also has to be taken of new planning and other technical issues which have arisen since the first wind farms were consented.
Replacing the original wind farm
From a commercial perspective, the objective is to minimise the amount of time when the site is not producing income from generation of energy. Ideally the repowering consent should be obtained by the time the consented operational life of the original wind farm ends. It is notoriously difficult to predict how long it takes to get a consent, so identifying the target date for submission of the repowering application should include plenty of room for contingencies.
Submission and approval of a decommissioning method statement for the original wind farm is part of the conditions attached to the Hagshaw Hill repowering consent.
Repowering – progress
In Scotland, repowering has still to gather momentum. There are only a few consents, including Windy Standard I (August 2025), and Tangy (December 2019; a revised proposal for taller turbines was submitted for scoping in July 2025). Applications include Beinn Ghlas (June 2025) and Crystal Rig (September 2025). Proposals submitted for scoping include Beinn Tharsuinn (June 2025), Hare Hill (May 2024) and Novar (May 2025).
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