£9.6m funding award for Pentland floating wind scheme off Dounreay
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The first stage of a proposed world-leading wind farm off the north coast of Caithness has been awarded £9.6 million of UK government funding.
The money for the Pentland Floating Offshore Wind Demonstrator – known as Pentland Demo – will support the development of a range of innovative, UK-manufactured floating wind technologies.
It is the initial phase of the Pentland Floating Offshore Wind Farm which will consist of up to 10 floating turbines, with a maximum blade-tip height of 300 metres, located around six kilometres north-west of Dounreay. It is likely to be the largest floating offshore wind farm in the world when it is built in the mid-2020s.
The Floating Offshore Wind (FOW) Demonstration Programme funding has been provided through the Net Zero Innovation Portfolio.
Project director Richard Copeland said: “The Pentland Demo project is a great opportunity to demonstrate new technologies which will accelerate the cost reduction and industrialisation of floating offshore wind in the UK.
“With this funding we will deploy several innovative technologies developed here in the UK by local companies. This provides a fantastic opportunity for our supply chain partners to showcase their capabilities and scale up towards our 100 MW Pentland Array project and for large commercial-scale deployment through ScotWind projects and other floating wind opportunities in the UK and globally.”
Technologies to be developed and demonstrated for the first time include:
- A narrow footprint mooring system using nylon mooring lines – this will "unlock shallow water floating offshore wind sites, reducing a site’s overall footprint and costs, and enabling greater co-existence with other sea users".
- Higher capacity dynamic cable protection and ancillaries – this will "enable the connection of next generation floating wind turbines, reducing cost by optimising design".
- Floating assembly methodology – "using modular industrialised components with the floating structure assembled in the UK".
- Digital twin and advanced monitoring system – "creating a state-of-the-art digital twin of a floating offshore wind turbine, developed using UK digital technology".
Pentland Demo is majority-owned by Danish fund management company Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP). It will showcase new floating wind technology ahead of the larger Pentland Array.
Copenhagen Offshore Partners (COP) is managing the project’s development activities on behalf of CIP.
The project in receipt of the funding will be led by a joint team from COP’s Global Floating Offshore Wind Competence Centre in Edinburgh, along with experts from SSE Renewables.
UK energy minister Greg Hands said: "We are already a world leader in offshore wind and floating technology is key to unlocking the full potential of the seas around Britain."
Ben Miller, senior policy manager at Scottish Renewables, said: “This funding adds to the momentum around floating offshore wind power after last week’s ScotWind outcome set out almost 15GW of new floating projects entering development in Scotland."
“Targeted funding like this is essential if we are to capture the supply chain benefits of our leading position on floating wind, building on the considerable deep-water expertise that we already have.
“Industry and government will both need to step up efforts over the coming months to match our ambitions with greater collaboration.”
The developers of the Pentland project held a month-long virtual consultation event in the autumn via pentlandfloatingwind.com and said they had received "valuable feedback" from the public.
