Inch Cape Offshore Limited (ICOL), a joint venture between Red Rock Power Limited and Electricity Supply Board (ESB) , has appointed JBA Consulting (JBA) to gather information about the installation phases of the 1.1 GW Inch Cape offshore wind farm in Scotland.
For the task, JBA will use its strategic and operation planning software ForeCoast Marine to model and further understand the environmental impacts of the project’s installation operations.
The software will simulate the wind farm’s asset-component installation phases, including foundations, inter-array cables, offshore substation platforms, export cables, and wind turbines.
Through these simulations, the performance of proposed strategies will be compared against key metrics such as CAPEX and OPEX, programme, and weather/logistical downtime which will enable the developers to optimise operations with its installation contractors, JBA said.
“ForeCoast Marine will allow us to optimise the project’s installation strategies. The simulation software allows multiple strategies to be compared efficiently and will help us de-risk the key operations in a challenging and diverse environment”, said Seán Kirwan , Project Manager at ICOL.
Located 15 kilometres off the Angus coast, Inch Cape offshore wind farm was one of five projects that were awarded Contract for Difference (CfD) in the UK’s latest allocation round.
ICOL initially planned to use wind turbines with a rated capacity of 9.5 MW but with the removal of the 1 GW capacity cap which occurred in August 2021 the developer will be able to select the most powerful turbines on the market, possibly with the ratings in excess of 15 MW within the consented parameters.
With up to 72 turbines, the offshore wind farm will be Scotland’s largest single source of renewable power when built, generating the equivalent of the annual demand of more than one million homes, according to Inch Cape.
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