News that the installation of a giant wind farm located in the Moray Firth, Scotland, is set to go ahead has been welcomed by the concrete industry keen to realise the potential of a range of foundation solutions for offshore wind turbines.
Moray Offshore Renewables has signed an agreement with the Crown Estate to start work on three separate wind farms in the Moray Firth. They will be named Stevenson, MacColl and Telford as a tribute to famous Scottish engineers. Moray Offshore expect that this wind farm development will produce up to 1,500 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 750,000 homes. The development will be as large as the London Array wind farm planned for the Thames Estuary but will be dwarfed by the even larger 3,500MW project planned for the Firth of Forth by Scottish and Southern Energy.
The Moray Firth and Firth of Forth projects represent, in water depths of between 30m and 60m, the next generation of wind farms. These will require more robust and bigger wind towers, said Andrew Minson, executive director of MPA The Concrete Centre. Accordingly, the concrete industry has developed a new range of wind tower foundation solutions that make good use of the long-term, low maintenance performance and sustainability benefits of concrete.
