the first turbines capable of generating more than 1MW were installed and the pace of growth started to accelerate as the larger power companies like Scottish Power and Scottish & Southern became increasingly involved in order to meet legal requirements to generate a certain amount of electricity using renewable means (see Renewables obligations below). Wind turbine development continued rapidly and by the mid-2000s 2MW+ turbines were the norm. In 2007, the German wind turbine producer Enercon installed the first 6MW model ("E-126"); The nameplate capacity was changed from 6MW to 7 MW after technical revisions were performed in 2009 and to 7.5 MW in 2010. Growth continued with bigger farms and larger, more efficient turbines sitting on taller and taller masts. Scotland's sparsely populated, hilly and windy countryside became a popular area for developers and the United Kingdom's first 100MW+ farm went operational in 2006 at Hadyard Hill in South Ayrshire. 2006 also saw the first use of the 3MW turbine. In 2008, the largest onshore wind farm in England was completed on Scout Moor and the repowering of the Slieve Rushen Wind Farm created the largest farm in Northern Ireland. In 2009, the largest wind farm in the United Kingdom went live at Whitelee on Eaglesham Moor in Scotland. This is a 539MW wind farm consisting of 215turbines. Approval has been granted to build several more 100MW+ wind farms on hills in Scotland and will feature 3.6MW turbines. As of September 2013, there were 458 operational onshore wind farms in the United Kingdom with a total of 6565MW of nameplate capacity. A further 1564MW of capacity is currently being constructed, while another 4.8GW of schemes have planning consent. In 2009, United Kingdom onshore wind farms generated 7,564GW·h of electricity; this represents a 2% contribution to the total United Kingdom electricity generation (378.5TW·h). Large onshore wind farms are usually directly connected to the National Grid, but smaller wind farms are connected to a regional distribution network, termed "embedded generation". In 2009 nearly half of wind generation capacity was embedded generation, but this is expected to reduce in future years as larger wind farms are built. Gaining planning permission for onshore wind farms continues to prove difficult, with many schemes stalled in the planning system and a high rate of refusal. The RenewableUK (formerly BWEA) figures show that there are approximately 7,000MW worth of onshore schemes waiting for planning permission. On