Scotland's Renewable Energy Blog

Beatrice could become one of the world’s largest offshore windfarms

Yesterday SSE submitted an application to Scottish Ministers for consent to develop the Beatrice Offshore Wind Farm.

Beatrice Offshore Windfarm Limited (BOWL) is the joint venture partnership formed between SSE Renewables (75%) and Repsol Nuevas Energias UK (25%) (formerly SeaEnergy Renewables). In February 2009 BOWL was awarded an exclusivity agreement by the Crown Estate to develop the Beatrice Offshore Wind Farm in Scottish Territorial Waters.

The Beatrice Offshore Wind Farm site is located in the Outer Moray Firth on the north-western point of the Smith Bank. It is approximately 13.5km from the Caithness coastline. The development site will cover an approximate area of 131.5km² .

The site is  approximately 11km from the world’s first deep water wind farm development – the two-turbine (10MW) Beatrice Demonstrator Project. The Beatrice Demonstrator turbines are owned by SSE and Talisman. The turbines have been operational since 2007.

Building on the success of the Beatrice Demonstrator Project, the partnership is  proposing to develop an offshore wind farm which will generate up to 1,000MW of renewable energy, enough to power over 796,000 homes. The proposed wind farm will have a maximum of 142 to 277 turbines, depending on turbine size.

The proposal will now be thoroughly scrutinised before a final decision is taken by Scottish Ministers. A decision is expected in around nine months. The application is the first of the Scottish Territorial Waters leases to be submitted for consideration and is the culmination of several years of data collation, environmental studies and consultation.