Construction work has begun at the Beatrice wind farm, located in the Outer Moray Firth. On the 2^nd April SSE announced the successful installation of the first cluster of four foundation piles, marking the start of offshore construction work on the project. The second cluster of foundation piles were successfully installed on the 10^th April and this installation work was undertaken by Seaway Heavy Lifting’s Stanislav Yudin crane vessel.  

The Beatrice wind farm is jointly owned by SSE (40%), Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (35%) and SDIC, which holds the remaining 25% interest. The first eight piles to ship to site were prepared at Fife fabricator BiFab’s Arnish yard. The steel piles, will provide foundations for two offshore transformer modules. BiFab was also awarded a contract by Seaway Heavy Lifting to build 26 jacket foundations for the project, using its facilities at Methil, Burntisland and Arnish in the Outer Hebrides.

Smulders was also contracted by Seaway Heavy Lifting to build 28 jackets at its yard in the Hoboken district of Antwerp. The remaining 30 jackets for the 84-turbine wind farm are being fabricated at Bladt Industries’ Lindo yard in Denmark.

UK Portfolio by Status (MW) March 2017

Source: RenewableUK Project Intelligence 

The above chart shows the total capacity of offshore wind projects in the UK by status as of 31st March 2017 and the chart below shows the total capacity of offshore wind projects in the UK by status as of 11^th April 2017. The start of construction at the Beatrice project has increased the total MW’s of projects in the UK which have a status of under construction. At the end of March, there was a total of 1,942MW worth of offshore wind projects which were under construction in the UK. However, the start-up of construction operations at the Beatrice project has now changed this, resulting in the UK having 2,530MW worth of under construction projects.

UK Portfolio by Status (MW) April 2017

Source: RenewableUK Project Intelligence 

The start of construction at the Beatrice project has also resulted in a changed with regards to RenewableUK’s project commissioning forecasts. The graph below shows RenewableUK’s forecasts for the total capacity for UK commissioning activity by Status. Prior to the start of construction at the Beatrice project, a total of 1,942MW worth of projects that were under construction, were forecast to be commissioned by 2022. However, this has now increased and a total of 2,529MW worth of projects which are currently under construction are forecast to be commissioned over the next five years.   

UK Commissioning Activity & Forecast by Status (MWs p.a.)

Source: RenewableUK Project Intelligence