The Brit-govt. has approved plans by Scottish Power to build a new 1.2 gigawatt offshore wind farm.
The East Anglia-3 development – to be built 46 miles off the coast – will consist of up to 172 turbines and will meet the electricity needs of 890,000 homes per year.
The project is one of four that the company is developing off East Anglia, and the second to receive planning approval. The nearby East Anglia-1 is underway and pre-construction work is taking place.
The planning consent will allow for the installation of larger and more efficient ‘next generation’ turbines, up to a tip height of 247 metres. This is two-and-a-half times the size of Big Ben (96 metres). In total, East Anglia-3 will require the following facilities:
- Up to four offshore collector stations and up to two offshore converter station platforms;
- Up to one offshore platform housing accommodation facilities;
- Subsea inter-array cables between the wind turbines and converter station and collector station platforms;
- Up to four subsea export cables to transmit electricity from the offshore platforms to shore;
- Up to four interconnector cables between the East Anglia-1 and East Anglia-3 Projects;
- Landfall at Bawdsey with onshore transition pits to join the offshore and onshore cables;
- Up to four onshore underground cables pulled through existing ducting to be laid by East Anglia ONE, running for approximately 37 km from landfall to the connection point at Bramford, Suffolk, with jointing pits, to transmit electricity to a new onshore transformer substation;
- An onshore transformer substation at Bramford, Suffolk, to connect the offshore windfarm to the National Grid.
Keith Anderson, Scottish Power’s Chief Executive, said: “Offshore wind has delivered on its promises from the outset. Our sector has met every technical and political challenge, grown the UK’s supply chain, and improved the technology at a rapid pace to allow projects to be deployed in ever harsher conditions.
“At the same time, the level of cost reductions achieved would more commonly be seen in consumer electronics.
“Our East Anglia-1 scheme is the best-value project to go in to construction in the UK (£119 MW/h), and costs are expected to reduce even further in future auctions.
“In a little over a decade, our sector has delivered substantial amounts of green electricity for the UK, supported billions of pounds of UK investment and created thousands of high quality jobs.
“Contracts are already being delivered in towns and cities across the UK. Offshore wind has supported jobs and investment in Hull, Hartlepool, Lowestoft, Great Yarmouth, Grimsby, Teesside, Tyneside, Fife, Machrihanish and Belfast to name but a few.”
The UK now benefits from a strong development pipeline of more than 11GW of consented capacity. This is in addition to the projects that are already built or are on track to supply 10% of the UK’s electricity demand by 2020.
8 Aug 2017
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