Construction of Seagreen, the world’s deepest fixed bottom offshore wind farm, which is also Scotland’s largest, has reached another milestone with the installation of a jacket in preparation for the project’s offshore substation topside which is due to be installed in early 2022.

Engineered, constructed and installed by Petrofac and weighing in at a colossal 5,100 tonnes, the six-legged jacket is now fixed to the seabed, at a water depth of around 55 metres. It will play a critical role in safely supporting the offshore substation above the sea during Seagreen’s 25 year operational lifespan.

The jacket has a seabed footprint of 43 metres by 43 metres and has built in tubing designed to guide the incoming 15 inter-array cables bringing the electricity generated by the turbines to the substation. In addition, the jacket also has tubing to guide the outgoing three export cables from the offshore substation to the seabed.

When completed in late 2022/early 2023, Seagreen will consist of 114 Vestas V164-10.0 MW turbines, the first of which was installed last week.

Situated around 27 kilometres off the Angus coast, the £3bn wind farm is a joint venture between SSE Renewables (49 percent) and TotalEnergies (51 percent).

At 1.1GW, Seagreen is Scotland’s largest renewable energy project and one of the biggest private investments in Scottish infrastructure. The wind farm will be capable of generating around 5,000 GWh of renewable energy annually which is enough clean and sustainable electricity to power more than 1.6 million UK homes.

With the equivalent saving of around 1.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions annually, Seagreen will make a significant contribution to Scotland’s and the UK’s net zero targets.

SSE Renewables is leading the development and construction of the Seagreen project and will operate Seagreen on completion for its expected 25-year lifetime.