Ross Ovens, managing director – offshore at ScottishPower Renewables, celebrates the region’s role in the global offshore wind industry.
Almost 25 years since the first offshore wind turbine appeared off the UK coastline and 10 years since ScottishPower’s first offshore wind farm came into operation at West of Duddon Sands, the industry in the UK has flourished and grown to become a world leader.
The East of England – where we operate our flagship East Anglia ONE offshore wind farm and are currently constructing East Anglia THREE – is right at the heart of that clean energy future as the UK sets out to power every home from offshore wind by the end of the decade.
The region’s leading position as a centre of excellence in the global offshore wind market is creating a positive and lasting legacy that will continue to deliver real and tangible benefits for generations to come.
Our East Anglia Hub won’t just deliver an unprecedented amount of clean, green electricity to power our daily lives and support the move to electric heating, transport and living.
What it means in practice is billions of pounds in investment, thousands of jobs supported across the supply chain and, crucially, helping deliver a fair and just transition away from oil and gas.
This is a huge year for our East Anglia THREE offshore wind farm, which will be ScottishPower’s largest ever wind farm and the second biggest in the world when it comes into operation in 2026.
With works on the onshore converter station site and onshore cable route – which will use the ducts that were installed when we were building East Anglia ONE – moving on at pace and really taking shape, our next milestone for the converter station complex will be the delivery of four huge transformers in early summer.
Our offshore construction programme will kick off at the start of September, in the biggest feat of engineering we’ve ever undertaken.
We got a proper sense of that recently when the topside for the project’s offshore converter station sailed from the Damen yard in Romania to Aker Solutions’ fabrication yard in Norway where the HVDC equipment – which we’re using for the first time in an offshore project – will be installed and commissioned.
The seven-storey structure is around half the size of Wembley Stadium’s pitch at around 68 metres long, and as tall as 10 double decker buses at 44 metres high. It will weigh the same as the Eiffel Tower at almost 10,000 tonnes when it’s completed.
It’s the biggest ever converter station constructed across the whole of the Iberdrola Group – and a sight to see as it took to the waters of the Black Sea.
It was a very memorable moment in a significant year for our East Anglia projects – a year that marks five years since the very first export at East Anglia ONE, we move offshore to build East Anglia THREE and we continue to progress our East Anglia Hub pipeline.
This absolutely cements East Anglia’s place on the global green energy map – and we’re proud to be playing a positive and leading part in its story.
For more information, visit spreastanglia.co.uk
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