Beatrice Schedules First Power for July

The 588MW Beatrice offshore wind farm is expected to produce first electricity in July this year, SSE, one of the owners of the wind farm, said.

SSE emphasises that there remains a lot to be done before the first power: commissioning the Blackhillock substation, completing the subsea and onshore cabling, energising the transmission system, completing jacket installation and erecting the first of the 84 Siemens 7MW turbines.

Recently, the jacket foundation for a Siemens Offshore Transformer Module (OTM) started its journey to the Beatrice wind farm, after undergoing final preparations at BiFab’s yard in Fife, Scotland.

In 2016, Siemens won a contract to supply, install and commission 84 7MW wind turbines, and provide grid access solution for the wind farm, which will feed the power to the grid through Nexans’ export cable.

The cable laying vessel Siem Aimery, supported by CSV Siem Stingray, laid and trenched 16 inter-array cables in its first campaign covering 24 connections, after which the vessels left the site. Siem Aimery will resume works around 1 March.

The wind farm is being developed by Beatrice Offshore Windfarm Ltd., a joint venture partnership between SSE, Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners and Red Rock Power Ltd.

It is scheduled to become fully operational in 2019.