Offshore

Vattenfall Inaugurates Scottish Offshore Wind farm

The European Offshore Wind Deployment Centre, with the world’s largest turbine capacity, is inaugurated in the presence of Vattenfall`s CEO Magnus Hall and Nicola Sturgeon, First Minister of Scotland.

The European Offshore Wind Deployment Centre, is at the heart of Vattenfall’s drive for low cost offshore wind power. The EOWDC, in Scotland’s North-east will produce enough electricity to meet the power demand of about 80,000 British households (312 GWh) every year.

Magnus Hall, CEO of Vattenfall, said: “Vattenfall is in Britain to grow. The success of our wind power investments over the past decade, and the ambition of Scottish and UK governments to transform the energy and transport sectors, give us confidence in our UK future. As we forge new partnerships in heat, e-mobility, retail, power distribution and wind over the next ten years we will be at the forefront of the UK’s decarbonisation of energy.”

Future wind power technology will be tested at the EOWDC in Aberdeen Bay, which is one of the first testing facilities of its kind. The aim is to accelerate the wind power industry’s drive for competitive renewable electricity generation. The eleven wind turbines, two 8.8 MW and nine 8.4 MW, have the largest turbine capacity in commercial operation in the world. One single rotor lap from the record 8.8 MW turbine provides a British household with electricity for a full day.

At EOWDC, two areas will be studied:

* New wind power technology

The technology for building the foundations of the turbine towers is new. Instead of using traditional monopiles (hollow steel tubes), a new technique has been used at Aberdeen Bay; so-called suction buckets. The method is suitable for seabed with shallow rock strata, is virtually silent which minimizes the disturbance of wildlife at sea.

* How the marine life is affected by wind farms

For studies of marine wildlife around wind farms, Vattenfalll and the EU have invested EUR 3 million to study the effect of offshore wind farms on dolphins, salmon, sea trout and sea birds.

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