Buchan Committee: No Objections to Early Start of MORL Construction

Members of the Buchan area committee raised no objections to request by Moray Offshore Renewables Ltd (MORL) on Tuesday.

Namely, the offshore wind farm developer asked to proceed with work on New Deer substations earlier than planned, writes The Press and Journal.

Last week MORL submitted a report to councillors as part of the applications. Infrastructure chief Stephen Archer said: “The purpose of the application is to allow work to be carried out on the substation site before the matters specified which relate to the cable route and landfall site at Inverboyndie have been approved.”

As part of the onshore work, 30km of underground cable is to run from land to the west of Cairnbanno House to Inverboyndie, near Banff.

MORL, a joint venture between EDP Renewables (EDPR UK) and Repsol Nuevas Energias UK, last year received consent to build up to 186 turbines 22km from the Caithness coastline.

With a total capacity of 1.116MW the wind farm will be capable of powering around 700.000 UK households.

The application is expected to go to full council in June.