SSE Renewables, alongside its partner TotalEnergies, has stated that Scotland’s “largest” offshore wind farm has started generating its first power.
The Seagreen offshore wind farm, situated 27km off the coast of Angus in Scotland, started generating its first electricity via 114 Vestas turbines that were commissioned and connected to the grid in the early hours of Monday morning.
The 1,075MW wind farm is expected to be fully operational in the first half of 2023.
Seagreen is a £3 billion project that has been positioned as Scotland’s “largest” offshore wind farm and will be the world’s deepest fixed bottom wind farms, SSE Renewables said.
“Seagreen has achieved a number of key milestones to date, but to see this turbine turning in the North Sea and to have reached first power safely, is a fantastic achievement for everyone connected to the project,” said Paul Cooley, director of global offshore wind at SSE Renewables.
“The project has already brought benefits to the local community, the UK supply chain and, once completed, Seagreen will make a significant contribution to Scotland and the UK’s ambitious renewable energy targets.”
SSE is working on what the firm has said is some of the largest low-carbon infrastructure projects in the world in addition to Seagreen, including the £3.6 billion Dogger Bank offshore wind farm, which is set to be the world’s largest, and the £580 million Viking onshore wind farm.
This continues a positive week for the Scottish offshore wind industry, with three additional wind projects, with a cumulative capacity of 2.8GW, set to be developed in Scotland after being cleared via the ScotWind Leasing initiative, bringing the scheme’s overall capacity to 27.6GW.
The three projects are being developed by Ocean Winds, Mainstream Renewable Power and ESB Asset Development and will cover over 560km² of seabed. Of these, Mainstream Renewable Power has the largest capacity at 1.8GW. The projects add to the growing total of ScotWind projects, which now sits at 20 projects under development.
The projects have also attracted significant supply chain commitments indicating an average of £1.2 billion investment in Scotland per gigawatt of capacity built.