aN SNP-led council faces a crunch decision about whether to provoke a showdown with the Scottish Government over the fate of 11 proposed wind farms in southwest Scotland which could power more a tenth of the country. East ayrshire Council will, on June 16, decide whether to formalise its objections to six proposed upgrades to the electricity network by Scottish Power. The upgrades form a substantial chunk of a wider ?130 million programme of grid improvements across the region that are necessary to allow the wind farms to go ahead. If East ayrshire upholds the decision against the upgrades that it reached in December, affecting numerous different developers, it will go down as one of the most significant council interventions against the wind industry in Scotland. The decision would be likely to lead to a public inquiry and put a new obstacle in the way of the Government s ambitions to achieve 100% renewable energy in Scotland by 2020. The grid proposals involve building six transmission lines between power substations that would link up the new wind farms to the national grid. These sit alongside Scottish Power s proposal to build new substations and other transmission lines in the adjacent council areas of Dumfries and Galloway and South ayrshire, all of which have been given approval by those two councils. But unless East ayrshire follows suit, the whole programme could be in doubt. all 11 of the wind farms involve the developers Scottish and Southern Energy, Scottish Power, E.ON, Fred Olsen Renewables and North British Windpower. The proposed sites are afton, Pencloe and Dersalloch in ayrshire, and Brockloch Rig, Whiteside Hill, Lorg, Blackcraig, Margree, Loch Hill, Sanquhar and Ulzieside in Dumfries and Galloway. also affected is Kyle Fo