A major milestone in the construction of Beatrice Offshore Wind Farm has been marked with the breaking of ground near Portgordon in Morayshire.
Enabling works are now underway at the main onshore construction compound near the cable landfall point for the route to Blackhillock.
Work on the Operations and Maintenance site – based in two historic Thomas Telford buildings in Wick – will start in January 2017, subject to planning consent.
A recent event in Wick saw residents welcome the plans to sympathetically renovate the buildings and return them to their originally intended maritime use.
Beatrice is a 588-MW offshore wind farm which will power around 450,000 homes and is one of the largest ever private investments in Scottish infrastructure.
The project – which is owned by SSE (40%), Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP) (35%) and SDIC (25%) – was given the final go ahead in May 2016 with construction also recently starting at the substation at Blackhillock.
Key component manufacturing is underway with offshore construction work starting in 2017. The project is expected to be fully operational in 2019.
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