Three Shetland ScotWind Projects Announced
The title of this post, is the same as that of this press release on Crown Estate Scotland.
These three paragraphs outline how the leases were allocated.
Three projects will be offered seabed agreements for offshore wind projects following Crown Estate Scotland’s ScotWind clearing process.
The announcement comes as an offshore wind supply chain summit is held in Aberdeen today (22 August) with Sir Ian Wood, chaired by Michael Matheson MSP, Cabinet Secretary for Energy, and including a keynote address by First Minister Nicola Sturgeon MSP.
Clearing saw the ‘NE1’ area east of Shetland made available for ScotWind applicants who met the required standards but who did not secure their chosen location earlier in the leasing process.
I think it was good idea to offer these leases to those bidders that failed to get a lease, the first time around, despite meeting the standards.
- Would it encourage bidders, if they knew that after the expense of setting up a bid, that if they failed, they could have another chance?
- It must also save the Scottish Government time and money checking out bidders.
- How many times have you interviewed several applicants for a job and then found jobs for some of those, that you didn’t choose for the original job?
Let’s hope the philosophy has generated some good extra contracts.
This map from Cross Estate Scotland shows all the contracts.
Note the three new leases numbered 18, 19 and 20 to the East of Shetland, in the North-East corner of the map.
Their details are as follows.
- 18 – Ocean Winds – 500 MW
- 19 – Mainstream Renewable Power – 1800 MW
- 20 – ESB Asset Development – 500 MW
Note.
All are floating wind farms.
- Ocean Winds is a Spanish renewable energy company that is developing the Moray West and Moray East wind farms.
- Mainstream Renewable Power appear to be a well-financed and ambitious company, 75 % owned by Aker.
- ESB Energy appear to be an experienced energy company owned by the Irish state, who operate several wind farms and Carrington gas-fired power station in the UK.
2.8 GW would appear to be a generous second helping.
Ocean Winds and Mainstream Renewable Power
This web page on the Ocean Winds web site, is entitled Ocean Winds Designated Preferred Bidder For Seabed Leases For 2.3 GW Of Floating Projects East Of Shetland, Scotland, contains several snippets of useful information.
- Crown Estate Scotland announced the result of ScotWind Leasing round clearing process, awarding Ocean Winds with two seabed leases for floating offshore wind projects: a 1.8 GW capacity site with partner Mainstream Renewable Power, and another 500 MW capacity site, east of the Shetland Islands.
- Ocean Winds’ international portfolio of projects now reaches 14.5 GW of gross capacity, including 6.1 GW in Scotland.
- Floating wind turbines for the two adjacent sites are confirmed, because of the water depth.
- The partners are committed to developing floating offshore wind on an industrial scale in Scotland, generating local jobs and opportunities in Scotland and the Shetland Islands.
- From the picture on the web page, it looks like WindFloat technology will be used.
- Ocean Winds developed the WindFloat Atlantic project.
Ocean Winds appear to want to go places.
The Shetland HVDC Connection
The Shetland HVDC Connection will connect Shetland to Scotland.
- It will be 160 miles long.
- It will have a capacity of 600 MW.
- It is estimated that it will cost more than £600 million.
- It will allow the 66MW Lerwick power station to close.
- It will be completed in 2024.
I have a feeling that all these numbers don’t add up to a sensible answer.
Consider.
- The three offshore wind farms can generate up to 2800 MW of green electricity.
- With a capacity factor of 50 %, an average of 1400 MW of electricity will be generated.
- The Viking onshore wind farm on Shetland could generate up to 450 MW.
- More wind farms are likely in and around Shetland.
- Lerwick power station can probably power most of the Shetland’s needs.
- Lerwick power station is likely to be closed soon.
- Sullum Voe Terminal has its own 100 MW gas-turbine power station.
- Load is balanced on Shetland by 3MWh of advanced lead-acid batteries.
- Lerwick has a district heating scheme.
If we assume that Shetland’s energy needs are of the order of a few hundred MW, it looks like at times the wind farms will be generating more electricity, than Shetland and the Shetland HVDC Connection can handle.
Various plans have suggested building electrolysers on Shetland to create hydrogen.
Conversion of excess electricity to hydrogen, would have the following advantages.
- The hydrogen could be used for local heavy transport and to replace diesel.
- Hydrogen could be used to fuel a gas turbine back-up power station, when needed.
- Hydrogen could be used for rocket fuel, if use of Shetland as a Spaceport for launching satellites takes off.
Any excess hydrogen could be exported to the rest of the UK or Europe.
The Anonymous Widower 
We can’t shift wind power from North Scotland now when its too windy so i do hope in parallel with developing these wind farms the grid also keeps ahead of the curve so we can exploit full power and not have to constrain it off.
Comment by Nicholas Lewis | August 26, 2022 |
Current News, in https://www.current-news.co.uk/ssen-announces-supply-chain-milestones-for-scottish-electricity-transmission-network-plans/, states:
“SSEN said it would release more detail on these projects later in the year, when National Grid ESO sets out the additional electricity transmission infrastructure required for the 28GW ScotWind project. Current 2030 network development plans will enable 11GW of ScotWind’s potential.”
Comment by Peter Robins | July 24, 2023 |
So barely 1/3rd of the planned wind output will be useable. Mind you im increasingly convinced that massive Hydrogen production facilities will be the only way to exploit the wind energy that could be exploited although with Vattenfall pulling out of Norfolk currently you can understand NG not wanting to over commit. As per my stuck record we need CEGB MkII to plan and deliver generation and transmission hand in hand.
Comment by Nicholas Lewis | July 24, 2023
I’m not sure it makes sense to try and use all the wind power generated. It’s clear that much more transmission infrastructure is needed atm to cover the ‘baseload’ requirements. But once you meet that, if you build extra to cover very windy days, then most of the time it won’t be needed, because most days aren’t very windy. This is not attractive for financiers. The same applies to storage. I read an interview a while back with someone from the storage company Fluence. He compared it with building a church. If you build your church big enough to cater for everyone that wants to attend on Xmas day, then most of it will be unused the rest of the year. NGESO have stated that they view the current constraint system for windy days to be the cheapest option.
It was a lot simpler in CEGB days, when the power sources weren’t so variable. Wind is not only highly variable, but hard to predict more than a day or two in advance.
Comment by Peter Robins | July 24, 2023
Forecasting wind still needs improving if the ESO wind forecast tool is anything to go by. Yesterday morning SP14 originally forecast at 7GW 48hrs earlier, upped to 9GW at T-24hr reforecast outturned at 9GW. There have been other occasions where its the opposite and ESO is having to call on expensive generation at short notice to compensate let alone trying to manage frequency nowadays.
Separately i get where ESO are coming from but to run the system continuously without fossil fuels is going to need some hefty storage or perhaps we will get CCGTs that can run on Hydrogen.
Comment by Nicholas Lewis | July 24, 2023
AI may be able to improve weather forecasting, but I think there’s always going to be uncertainty. The Met Office publish probability %ages with their rain forecast now, and wind needs something similar.
NGESO have just published their latest Future Energy Scenarios (https://www.nationalgrideso.com/future-energy/future-energy-scenarios if you’ve not seen it), which foresees “12-56 TWh of inter-seasonal storage … in 2050”. One of their scenarios foresees “47 GW of electricity storage by 2050, with 18 GW connected at distribution level”; another 20GW from V2G. They also foresee 18GW from interconnectors. But IMO they’re right to stress the importance of “Demand Side Response”, calling for a “radical overhaul” of energy efficiency along with “smart digital solutions” in homes. Everybody notices a power cut, but who’s going to notice if the supplier has the ability to turn the thermostat down by 0.5C or delay the fridge coming on by half an hour when supply is short? This sort of thing can reduce the need for expensive infrastructure if large numbers of consumers participate.
Comment by Peter Robins | July 26, 2023
Agree on demand side response but it needs to be controlled by the consumer. I certainly would want V2G if i found out the next morning i hadn’t got a full charge. Incentivise me to save and i will do it needs to the policy
Comment by Nicholas Lewis | July 26, 2023
As I see it, consumers would sign up for a scheme allowing the Grid/supplier to work within certain parameters. I participated in the switch-off trial over the winter, which was successful. But I think a manual scheme as in the trial relies too much on the consumer being present and able/willing to do whatever’s needed at the appropriate time. Eventually, this will all be controlled by smart devices, and the question is whether every consumer is able/willing to spend the time to get it to work as intended.
The same would apply with V2G. V2G is a bit more complicated, as ideally you would also access when your vehicle is away from home, for example, the office carpark or the park and ride. That would need a 3-way contract between the owner of the EV/battery, the owner of the car park, and the supplier – in fact, 2 suppliers, as the 2 owners might have different suppliers.
Comment by Peter Robins | July 26, 2023
On the subject of reducing constraints, NGESO have just announced a new “MW Dispatch” service to augment the Balancing Mechanism. Most end consumers reading this won’t have a clue what they’re talking about (the usual MIA (Mass of Inscrutable Acronyms)), but Octopus and UKPN have announced they’ll be providing free electricity when there are these local constraints – which should be nice and easy for consumers to understand.
The link on the NGESO page “World-first for Constraints Market” is a related announcement for a Local Constraint Market on the B6 boundary. This should enable Scottish consumers to benefit from the large amount of generation there now is in Scotland.
Comment by Peter Robins | August 13, 2023
duh, I forgot to include the link https://www.nationalgrideso.com/news/new-ancillary-service-distributed-energy-announced-eso-and-dnos
Comment by Peter Robins | August 13, 2023
Umm further complication to the system which which will have unintended outcomes
Comment by Nicholas Lewis | August 13, 2023
It looks like the North Sea Link between Blyth and Norway took about six years from agreeing a start of construction to commissioning.
Work has started on the much shorter Shetland HVDC Connection, with the 600 MW cable to be laid in the next eighteen months. It is likely to be commissioned in 2024.
As these wind farms will probably be used initially to shut down Lerwick power station, it looks to me, that SSE, who are responsible for the Shetland HVDC Connection, have got a transmission and use plan for the electricity from the three wind farms as they come on stream.
I would also expect to see a large electrolyser installed on Shetland.
Comment by AnonW | August 26, 2022 |
Lerwick is c30MWe so a couple of wind turbines will cover that. There is already excess wind capacity in the North of Scotland and there are plenty more onshore wind sites that are consented that have yet to be constructed. This need an additional HVDC interconnector to link across to Aberdeen coast area to allow it to then use the big Scotland to England HVDC interconnectors. The ESO has a germ of a plan but there not yet consented so what needs to happen is for that whole process to be scrapped and there told to get on with it. The rest of the world are playing catch up to UK but there isn’t big capacity in HVDC cable manufacturing let alone the EHV equipment needed to service everybody so given we need to import most of this kit (we shouldn’t have to the original grid was built out with indigenous kit but that’s another story) we need to get orders in now as lead times are extending.
Comment by Nicholas Lewis | August 26, 2022 |
Xlinks have got planning permission for a cable factory at Hunterston.
As you say we should get on with it.
Comment by AnonW | August 27, 2022 |
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