Construction reaches ‘significant’ point on world’s deepest fixed bottom wind farm

Seagreen Offshore Wind Farm

ANOTHER ‘significant’ milestone has been reached on the construction of the world’s deepest fixed bottom offshore wind farm in Scotland.

SSE made the announcement following the successful installation of the 4,800 tonnes offshore platform topside, which forms the backbone of the offshore wind farm – which sits 27km off the Angus coast.

At 40 metres-long, 45 metres-wide and 15 metres-high, the heavyweight superstructure’s role is to collect and manage 1,075MW of power generated by the 114 Vestas wind turbines before transferring it ashore via around 60KM of offshore subsea cabling.

Once onshore, the electricity continues to the new Tealing substation near Dundee via a further 19km of cabling for onward distribution to homes and businesses via the national electricity network.

The topside was lifted from a heavy transport vessel and on to the previously installed six-legged jacket foundation. The completed structure sits in water depths of around 55m and will be one of the largest AC platforms in UK waters.

Specialist cable installation and support vessels will continue to install the onsite inter-array network of cables to the turbines and to the offshore platform. Another vessel is currently installing the export cable from the landfall point at Carnoustie.

Director of the Seagreen project, John Hill, said, “Once again, the many years of careful design and planning have come to fruition with the arrival and successful installation of one of the UK’s largest offshore AC platforms, serving what will become Scotland’s largest offshore wind farm. At around 4,800 tonnes, the topside is a significant piece of equipment which has been carefully designed to withstand the rigours of a long operational life in the North Sea. The teams involved have done an excellent job.”