BlueFloat, Renantis complete surveys at Scottish floating offshore wind sites

Preparatory survey work on four new floating offshore wind farms has been completed in the North Sea.

Geophysical survey work was completed on BlueFloatEnergy and Renantis Partnership’s ScotWind projects, namely the 900 MW Broadshore project, located 50 kilometers north of Fraserburgh, and the 1.2 GW Bellrock project, located 120 kilometers east of Aberdeen.

The partnership commissioned Acteon to map and analyze the composition and structure of the seabed at its floating offshore wind sites.

The survey work at the floating offshore wind farm sites also included the partnership’s two 99 MW innovation projects, Sinclair and Scaraben, which lie adjacent to Broadshore and were secured in the Crown Estate Scotland’s INTOG innovation auction earlier this year.

The Ocean Fortune vessel, designed specifically for year-round operations in the North Sea, was mobilized from Peterhead.

The surveys were carried out by Acteon’s offshore site investigation services team, with onshore support provided by the company’s operations center in Westhill, Aberdeenshire, and its data center in Livingston, West Lothian.

“One of the main benefits of floating wind farms is that projects can be sited further out to sea in deeper waters with stronger wind conditions. Our Bellrock project will be one of the furthest offshore wind farms in the world and this analysis of the seabed composition is crucial in building up our knowledge of what is possible, helping to shape and inform the designs going forward,” said David Robertson, BlueFloat Energy and Renantis Partnership Portfolio Director.

According to Acteon, the data collected by the company is now being used to build up a detailed picture of the sites, identifying seabed features and potential hazards, and feeding into a model of the seabed.

The data will also be used to refine the site boundaries and guide decisions on turbine layouts and the design of the foundations and moorings, said Acteon.

“Our early involvement provided data interpretation services to help all the teams involved in the project understand the seafloor composition and structure, enabling informed decisions about layout, designs and equipment that will best suit the conditions,” said Sudhir Pai, Executive Vice President, Acteon Data, and Robotics Division.