Marine Management Organisation and Natural England Conduct Licence Inspection for Walney 2 (UK)

On 29 June 2011, Marine Management Organisation and Natural England conducted a site visit at Walney 2 for inspection of the current Marine Licence.

The aim of the visit was to inspect Walney Offshore Windfarms implementation of the marine mammal mitigation during piling of monopiles by Svanen.

Noise from piling of monopiles may impact marine mammals and cause disturbance or even injury to animals appearing close to the piling. Therefore a vessel with marine mammal observers (MMO) is in place during each piling to ensure a ‘marine mammals free’ sea in a radius of 500m from the piling location. This is done by visual observation in combination with applying Passive Acoustic Monitoring (PAM) equipment. This implementation of the licence requirements is given in a Marine Mammal Mitigation Programme.

The inspection was conducted by two staff members from Marine Management Organisation and one staff member from Natural England.

The Walney Offshore Windfarm

The Walney Offshore Windfarm project is located approximately 15km west of Barrow-in-Furness in Cumbria. The project consists of Walney 1 and Walney 2 each with 51 – 3.6MW turbines, giving a total capacity of the Walney project of 367.2MW. The rotor diameter of the turbines is 107m for Walney 1 and 120m for Walney 2, with a maximum height of 150m from blade tip to sea level. The total area of the development is some 73km2.

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Source: dongenergy, July 29, 2011