Scottish ports are in line for massive infrastructure changes to cater for the amount of offshore wind farms in the pipeline for the North Sea.
In total, 38 projects with a potential capital value of £6.5 billion (€7.5 billion) have completed Stage One of a so-called Strategic Investment Model (SIM) process, which the SIM Working Group is supporting by facilitating discussions between project developers and the ports that need to be upgraded to accommodate the sector.
SIM is a group of offshore wind developers, the Scottish government, enterprise agencies and Crown Estate Scotland.
“It takes 10 years to build an offshore wind farm,” said Maf Smith, of Lumen Energy & Environment, which is one of the companies providing support, specifically stakeholder engagement, in the SIM process. “Contracts for the port come late in the process – until the offshore wind farm has the Contract for Difference they won’t sign any contracts. Then it’s Go.
“Each project will have drawn up its own prospectus and the SIM Group will send them information on interested offshore wind developers.”
Two of three projects named
The Port of Cromarty Firth and Port of Nigg are two of three projects that have gone into Stage 2. The third is not being announced yet.
The Scottish government has pledged £500 million (€583 million) over the next five years to support these projects.
The Port of Cromarty Firth, which is part of the Inverness and Cromarty Firth Green Freeport, plans to support floating offshore wind farms, which are a feature of Scottish development, with many of the upcoming projects floating wind.
An additional five hectares of storage space will need to be built to enable the build of around 1GW of floating wind capacity each year, the SIM Group says, with assembly and integration of foundation and turbines enabled.
“This initial 5ha development is part of a wider plan to extend the existing 12ha of open storage capacity adjacent to a 372m quayside, currently being used to marshall the Moray West XL monopiles, by adding 20ha of lay-down area and a 413m quay, in four phases,” says the SIM Group. “In this first phase, Phase 5A, PoCF will deliver 5ha of land (15t/m2), a 175m quay with a heavy load pad (25t/m2), as well as a deep pocket (16m) next to the quay, delivering 17ha in total with 547m quay ready for 2028. Port of Cromarty Firth.”
At the Port of Nigg, a new deepwater berth (22m at Lowest Astronomical Tide) with 160m quay, 46,860m2 storage area and ground loading capacity of 30t/m2 will be needed.
“Central to this development is the creation of an ultra-deep water sea-facing berth, positioning the Port of Nigg as one of the UK’s deepest ports,” said Smith. “The expansion will result in a combined addition of 420m of quayside being available at Nigg, taking the facility’s total quayside to an impressive 1,555m. The project will cement the Port of Nigg as a leading location for existing fixed-bottom offshore wind projects and support the industrialisation of floating offshore wind.
“So far the focus of the offshore wind market has been on the east of England. Coming down the pipeline is going to be Scotland, particularly in floating wind, which has not been done at such a scale before.
“We’ve seen ports being built out but not at the scale we need for this. It’s a quantum challenge to keep up.”
