Virtually everything about the Moray East wind farm is vast. Stretching across 295 sq km of waters in the Moray Firth, 22km off the northwestern tip of Scotland, the offshore wind farm is home to 100 turbines, each capable of delivering 9.5MW of power. That makes Moray Firth the largest operational offshore wind farm to date in Scottish waters, big enough to power around 950,000 UK homes, and representing almost 40 per cent of domestic electricity consumption in Scotland.
Thanks to learning from previous schemes, the project – which was completed by a consortium formed by EDP Renewables (EDPR), the world’s fourth largest clean energy group, and other companies – was able to secure a government Contract for Difference (CfD) of £57.50 per MWh in a competitive auction in 2017.
Moray East is testimony to the success of offshore wind, an industry that has increased fourfold in terms of UK capacity over the last decade, according to figures from the International Renewable Energy Agency. Besides bringing energy to hundreds of thousands of households, and helping the UK meet its carbon reduction targets (Moray East alone has the capacity to save 1.7mn tonnes of CO2 every year), offshore wind is creating many jobs in coastal communities.
“Having offshore wind in Fraserburgh has supported the regeneration of our town centre,” says Michael Murray, Convenor of the Fraserburgh Harbour Commissioners, which has been chosen as the operations and maintenance hub for Moray East. “Offshore wind helps us to be more resilient as a community as it brings long-term jobs. We have a new hotel opening, and the demand that Moray East brought greatly contributed to the business case for that initiative,” Murray says.
More jobs are set to follow, according to Bautista Rodríguez Sánchez, CEO at Ocean Winds (a 50:50 JV between EDPR and Engie) and CTO at EDPR, part of the EDP Group, a global energy major operating in 29 markets. “The wider lessons learned at this wind farm pave the way to develop further capacity in the Moray Firth through the Moray West project, an 882MW offshore wind farm that was recently awarded a CfD from the UK government and is just about to enter construction,” he says.
Following on from this, Ocean Winds is also planning a project called Caledonia, which will boast more offshore wind capacity than the Moray East and West projects combined. In addition, it will develop two new floating offshore wind projects in Scotland with a total capacity of 2.3GW, after winning development rights in the clearing process of ScotWind Leasing. With this project, the UK has become Europe’s leading offshore wind producer mainly thanks to the North Sea and its shallow waters, in which it is easy to install turbines on the seabed. In fact, in Scotland alone, Ocean Winds now has a total portfolio of 6.1GW. In countries that lack shallow offshore waters, a new type of wind farm is needed. And that is taking shape off the coast of Portugal.
In the North Region of Portugal, the three wind turbines at the Windfloat Atlantic project off the coast of Viana do Castelo are installed in waters up to 100 metres deep. Each of Windfloat Atlantic’s 8.4MW turbines sits on a massive semi-submersible floating platform. This is floating wind, a technology that is being demonstrated as commercially viable at Windfloat Atlantic – a joint venture between Ocean Winds, Repsol and Principle Power – and could be the key to unlocking almost limitless amounts of renewable energy in seas around the world.
“Floating wind opens new opportunities for the offshore industry, making it possible to access marine areas with greater wind resources, and ensuring offshore production in regions where the depth of nearshore waters does not allow the use of conventional technologies,” Rodríguez says. “This way, the area of seabed where it’s possible to develop offshore wind can be maximised, something critical for the growth of this segment and the development of further projects to achieve net zero.” Furthermore, he explains, for floating wind, the construction and assembly of the platform with the turbines is done onshore before towing it to its final location, achieving greater economic efficiency.
“This project deployed the first floating offshore wind turbine in the open waters of the Atlantic, and the first implementation of a semi-submersible structure to support a multi-megawatt wind turbine,” continues Rodríguez. “Windfloat Atlantic and its encouraging success, with more than two years of operating experience, have demonstrated the low-risk profile and economic competitiveness of the technology, paving the way for future commercial offshore floating wind farm structures.”
The rapid progress of projects such as Windfloat Atlantic has seen analysts scrambling to update their forecasts for floating wind, with the Global Wind Energy Council, an industry body, raising its 2030 estimate for the technology from 6.5GW to 16.5GW in the space of a year. “Floating offshore technology and experience has progressed tremendously over the last few years,” says Miguel Stilwell d'Andrade, CEO of EDP. “It is expected that by the end of this decade there will be significant growth and new opportunities in different markets. This will allow us to continue to drive this technology – which has been proven successful and is ready to be scaled up – and that will accelerate the energy transition even more.”
Luís Nobre, President of the Council at Viana do Castelo, is glad to see the turbines spinning in the deep waters off the coast. “Hosting the Windfloat project was an opportunity we couldn’t refuse,” he says. “We have been working side by side with the consortium in charge, trying to support and facilitate everything within our reach, because we know that the success of the project is also the success of the city.”
