SSE Renewables is planning to site up to 307 large fixed-bottom turbines in water depths more than 60 metres, according to its application to Scotland’s East Lothian Council. The first electricity could be generated as soon as 2027 if the giant project gets the go-ahead, and the facility could reach full production by 2030. At that point, the wind farm would produce enough power for about five million homes, the developer said.
If the application is successful, the wind farm will create demand for a wide range of construction, installation, and support vessels. At present, Europe has limited capacity for building the most advanced large installation vessels, with Norwegian yards including Ulstein and Vard seen as frontrunners.
SSE Renewables said that the project would create thousands of jobs and help to develop further a strong supply chain in the offshore renewables sector. It estimates that more than 9,000 jobs could be created in the UK, many of them in Scotland, adding a possible £8.3bn for the UK economy over the wind farm’s lifetime.
Berwick Bank Project Director, Alex Meredith, commented: “We’re aiming to begin delivering the first energy in 2027, so it’s a very short lead time for a project of this size … We’re going to be working with some difficult conditions, and that obviously has challenges in terms of the scale of the infrastructure you need to put in to protect from the elements … We will be urging the planning authorities to consider the application quickly to allow us to deliver our largest wind farm to date in the shortest possible time.”
Meredith stressed that Scotland is a great place for wind because it blows strongly and consistently most of the time. However he noted the importance of shoreside infrastructure, including the cables to deliver electricity to other parts of the UK.
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