Construction of Scotland´s largest offshore wind farm completed
The last of 84 offshore wind turbines was commissioned on May 15 at Beatrice, Scotland’s largest offshore wind farm, which has been completed on time and under budget after three years of construction.
Beatrice Offshore Windfarm Limited (BOWL) is a joint venture development led by SSE Renewables (40%), Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (35%) and Red Rock Power Limited, subsidiary of SDIC Power Holdings CO. (25%).
The final 7MW Siemens Gamesa turbine was installed in the Outer Moray Firth, around 13km off the coast of Caithness, bringing the site’s total installed capacity to 588MW – enough to provide clean, low carbon energy to over 450,000 homes.
Each of Beatrice’s 84 turbines are 188m tall from sea level to blade tip, Beatrice is the largest offshore wind farm in the world to use jacket foundations. These jackets weigh around 1,000 tonnes each and are the deepest water fixed foundations of any wind farm in the world, installed in water depths of over 56m.
SSE Renewables, the Beatrice’s majority shareholder, led on the construction process and will manage operations and maintenance from a new base in Wick, having invested over GBP 20 million (US$ 25,76 million) in the coastal town to redevelop the harbour front and renovate two 200-year-old Thomas Telford buildings that will soon become home to up to 90 long-term members of staff.
BOWL engaged constructively to maximise the opportunity for economic benefits and contracts were placed with companies and businesses across the supply chain resulting in over GBP 1.1 billion (US$ 1.4 billion) construction spend in the UK and around half of this in Scotland. This included CS Wind’s Machrihanish factory for turbine towers, Global Energy Group’s Nigg Energy Park for marshalling and turbine pre-assembly, Bi-Fab in Fife and on Lewis for jacket foundations and piles, Babcock Marine in Rosyth for the Offshore Transformer Module topsides, JDR Cables in Hartlepool for array cables and Siemens Gamesa in Hull for blade manufacturing.
The investment in the Beatrice offshore wind farm was GBP 2.6 billion (US$ 3.3 billion).
Beatrice will be fully operational in summer 2019.
Country news
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