Offshore staff
KIRKWALL, UK — Offshore geotechnical and geophysical surveys have been completed for the proposed West of Orkney wind farm, 25 km north of the Sutherland coast in Scotland’s far north and 30 km west of the Orkney Islands.
The results will support the FEED for the scheme, which is planned to comprise up to 125 fixed-bottom offshore wind turbines.
Last year, the West of Orkney Windfarm joint venture partners Corio Generation, TotalEnergies and Renewable Infrastructure Development Group (RIDG) secured the development rights to an area of seabed from Crown Estate Scotland in the ScotWind leasing process.
They plan a capacity of about 2 GW and to deliver first power in 2029. The developers will likely submit offshore and onshore consent applications to Scottish Ministers and The Highland Council later this year.
This year’s surveys across the 657-sq-km offshore option agreement area were designed to provide improved site characterization and to influence subsequent offshore ground modeling work.
For the geotechnical campaign, Geoquip Marine deployed the Dina Polaris vessel operating out of Scrabster Harbour with the program lasting for 65 vessel days, during which the crew completed 23 composite sampling and testing boreholes to depths between 10 m and 90 m below the seafloor.
Gardline, the offshore geophysical survey contractor, used the Ocean Endeavour operating out of Aberdeen and the Port of Leith to collect ultrahigh-resolution seismic, and multi-beam echo sounder data were collected during the 55-day program.
