Energy / Work on Stoura wind farm progresses – but still early days yet
Photo: Shetland News
THE LARGE wind turbines that could make up the 500MW Stoura floating offshore wind farm around 30 miles to the east of Shetland would be visible from shore on clear days.
The team behind the project, driven forward by Irish energy company ESB, was in Shetland this week to speak to stakeholders, community representatives and also hosted an exhibition in the Voe hall on Thursday.
Project manager Cian Desmond said the company was working towards submitting a consent application by 2028/29.
In the time between now and that target date, the company hopes to be able to engage with the public to identify a suitable location in the wider Sullom Voe area for the wind farm’s cable landfall and the construction of a substation.
He said the projects team was working towards publishing its Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) report by March next year.
Desmond said he was well aware of widespread concern within the fishing industry and the additional squeeze the wind farm could have on fishing grounds.
He said the company had a “strong relationship” with the industry and a lot of engagement and meeting with senior industry representative have already taken place.
“There are discussions that need to happen there,” he said, “and the early engagement that we had was positive.
“It’s early days in the project and we want to keep that relationship going and see how the plans progress.”
And he conceded that it was difficult at this stage to say exactly how the project would develop over coming years.
He described the new Kergord 2 substation, announced by network operator SSEN Transmission earlier this week, as the “centre of gravity” which will determine all the other projects that are in the pipeline for Shetland’s North Mainland.
Asked whether a target date for Stoura to be operational by 2035 with a technology that remained largely unproven was realistic, he described the timeline as “ambitious”.
“There are development and innovation in this project, and innovation brings opportunity,” he said.
“There are jobs being created by these floating wind turbines that people might have not even thought about.
“But it is a proven technology, lots is drawing on technology that has been used in the oil and gas industry for generations, also in ship building and naval architecture – the difference is that you have a turbine sitting on top of it.
“There is good confidence in the market that these technologies are going to work.”
He said the company was happy to provide community benefit but would prefer to have UK-wide rules for this as is the case in Ireland, where renewable projects pay two Euros per megawatt hour (MWh) into a national fund.
Desmond said ESB responded to a recent consultation on this and added that in his view the rules needed to be the same for every developer.
He said the industry was currently developing turbines with a capacity of between 15MW and 25MW, which are four to six times the size of the Vestas turbines used by Viking Energy.
If the ESB settles for a 18MW turbine, 28 of such turbines would be needed for the Stoura wind farm. Each turbine would have a rotor span of 270 metres, he said.
However, currently no-one knows whether all this is going to happen.
An investment decision is expected to be made by 2032, and Desmond himself was happy to say that there was “huge financial uncertainty with the project”, and that at this stage no-one knows “what the financial arrangement is going to be”.
Should it all become a reality, then ESB is planning to create an operation and maintenance base in Shetland, and that could create anything up to 50 local jobs.
The event in Voe was held a few days after a community engagement session in Lerwick which saw a number of energy developers to give details of the “bigger picture” coming to Shetland over the coming years.
Also still planned for the seas to the east of Shetland is the proposed larger 2.3GW Arven wind farm, which is still active despite one of its two developers – Mainstream Renewable Power – pulling out of the project.
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