Scoping done for another Scottish wind farm
Scotland’s Bowdun Offshore Wind Farm, at 1GW of capacity yet by no means the largest, has had its scoping reported submitted to the Scottish government.
The scoping was done by a consortium named Thistle Wind Partners (TWP), founded in 2020 among DEME Concessions, French renewable energy firm Qair and Aspiravi, a Belgian wind energy firm.
It was set up to dedicate itself to offshore wind in Scotland and has already secured rights to almost 400km2 of seabed under the ScotWind leasing round in 2022.
The scoping report provides information on the proposed offshore infrastructure and outlines the approach to the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), including baseline data sources, TWP says.
Aerial bird and marine mammal surveys were completed in February and a benthic survey in May, environmental baseline surveys of the array area and export cable corridor.
Bowdun Offshore Wind Farm, an approximately 1GW fixed-foundation project 44km to the east of Stonehaven, will connect to the grid in Aberdeenshire.
Scotland has a massive pipeline of offshore wind at the pre-planning stages, with a total potential 33GW in the pipeline, according to Crown Estate Scotland figures.
This could power around 25 million homes – which is 10 times the number of dwellings in Scotland and means it can export even more electricity than it does today.
Indeed, it is a major exporter already, with Scottish government figures showing it exported 18.7TWh in 2022, compared with 16TWh in 2021.
Its top customers are Brazil, the US, Netherlands, Norway, Denmark and England, according to the Scottish government.
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