The amount of power that can be generated from the Moray East Wind Farm is significantly more than quoted and ‘very much a conservative estimate’, according to a spokesman for the project.
The development within the Moray Firth will see 100 wind turbines installed and has been described by Moray East as ‘the biggest infrastructure project’ in the UK.
Proposals for the Moray East Offshore Wind Farm were approved in 2014, and now the project is moving forward with developer EDPR awarding contracts within the supply chain.
When the project was first announced the amount of energy to be generated was quoted at around 950,000 homes, but a spokesperson for Moray East has revealed that they believe the potential to be much higher based on their own data.
The Moray East spokesman said: “How much energy it’s going to produce is the most important thing. The way that we work that out is that we base it on the last year’s worth of estimates of wind in terms of output and other wind farms that have already been installed around the UK, so we know that the wind resource where we are is considerably better than the rest of the UK.
“Using average consumption figures that makes the estimate of 950,000 – just shy of one million homes. But I’d say these are conservative wind estimates. We know this because we have infrastructure out in the field with instruments that can tell us what the actual wind [speed] is compared to other wind farms in the UK.”
Generation estimates for offshore wind include all wind farm and wind farm projects around the coastline of the UK to give an approximate number of houses the development should power upon completion.
Yet, the circumstances often differ in terms of the distance from land and the water depth.
The spokesman added: “In terms of the estimate, the average figures include other wind farms across the UK that are much closer to shore and where water is shallower compared with us, places where there is much less wind, so that pulls the average down. So it’s justifiable to say that the 950,000 homes estimate is very much a conservative estimate.”
Moray East is a companion project to the 90-turbine Moray West development announced in May.
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