Renewable power generator Statkraft has purchased two wind farms in Shetland with an approximate generation capacity of 120MW.
The wind farms, which are situated at Beaw Field in Yell and Mossy Hill, just outside Lerwick, will bolster Statkraft’s growing wind generation portfolio around the Scottish subarctic archipelago.
Beaw Field has a generation capacity of approximately 72MW from 17 turbines. Mossy Hill has around 48MW installed capacity and up to 12 turbines.
Statkraft also owns another wind farm dubbed Energy Isles, which is located in Yell with approximately 126MW of installed capacity and up to 18 turbines. The project is subject to final consent being granted by Scottish Ministers.
“I’m really pleased that we’ve completed the purchase of these two sites in Shetland, which will eventually generate enough power for the equivalent of over 90,000 homes. Shetland has a proud history of leading the way in green energy innovation, and I’m delighted that Statkraft can help this continue,” said Richard Mardon, Statkraft’s head of UK Development.
“These wind farms represent a positive step towards achieving Scotland’s goal of generating a further 12GW of onshore wind energy by 2030 and will play a key part in the push towards a full transition to renewable energy in the UK.”
Shetland is seeing growing renewable generation capacity due to its natural resources such as wind. Following the Crown Estate Scotland’s ScotWind clearing process in August 2022, it was confirmed there would be an expansion of Scottish offshore wind with the NE1 area east of Shetland made available for ScotWind applicants that met the required standards.
Alongside this, Edinburgh-based tidal power specialist Nova claimed a “world first” in 2018 by aiming to pair Tesla batteries with its own tidal energy turbines in Scotland, in a project which had been supported by government funding.
The project benefitted from more than £270,000 of funding under Scotland’s Low Carbon Infrastructure Transition Programme (LCITP), and thus Nova connected an array of Tesla Powerpack systems to its Shetland Tidal Array to produce what it has termed a Tidal Energy Storage System (TESS).