Ocean Winds, an offshore wind joint venture between EDP Renewables and ENGIE, has announced the installation of the final turbine at its Moray West offshore wind power plant.
The installation of the 60th turbine, supplied by Siemens Gamesa, means that the 882MW wind project is nearing the end of construction and looks set to be operational during 2025, in line with the projected commercial operations date.
Ocean Winds is following an accelerated development and construction plan, having originally predicted a 2026/27 operational start date in its application for Auction Round 4 (AR4) of the Contracts for Difference (CfD) scheme.
Located off the northern coast of Scotland in the Moray Firth, Moray West generated first power in July this year. Once the site is fully operational, Ocean Winds will be the largest offshore wind operator in Scotland; the 50/50 joint venture has a 6GW portfolio of UK offshore wind.
Siemens Gamesa, the wind-focused arm of Siemens Energy, managed the pre-assembly activity of all 60 turbines for the project, each one of which can generate up to 14.7MW output. It also manufactured the blades for the project at its Hull facility, which has recruited more than 600 people in the last 12 months and employs a total of 1,300 people.
According to Ocean Winds, during construction phases, Moray West will create over 1,500 full-time equivalent years of work in Scotland, and over its lifespan, the wind farm will inject over £800 million into the local Scottish economy.
Siemens Gamesa has been marshalling all turbine components at Port of Nigg from where the Cadeler heavy lift vessel ‘Wind Orca’ undertook the installation. All of the foundations for the wind farm, the offshore substations and array-cables had been installed and, onshore, export cables are in place, connecting the wind turbines with the NETS at Blackhillock substation.
Pete Geddes, project director of the Moray West project, said: “What a journey– and what a result! Moray West really has ‘set the bar high’ in terms of both technological innovation, and rock-solid project execution. More important than ever, the project has been delivered on time, on budget, and with the highest level of quality.”
Ocean Winds UK country manager Adam Morrison agreed that the “fantastic milestone” was a “landmark” demonstrating the company’s “commitment to successful delivery”.
He added: “We don’t want to stop here. Pipeline continuity is essential to the success of the energy transition in the north-east of Scotland and we need the support of both governments to ensure we can move promptly on to our next major project in the region, Caledonia.”
At the start of this year, Amazon signed a corporate power purchase agreement (cPPA) with ENGIE that increased its share of output from Moray West to a total of 473MW. Amazon aims to power all of its operations with 100% renewable energy by 2025.
That includes its Amazon Web Services arm, which relies on vast amounts of energy to power its data centres. The impact of data centres’ electricity draw was explored in a recent Current± blog.
