Thistle Wind Partners (TWP) has submitted the offshore scoping report for its 1GW Bowdun Offshore Wind Farm off the coast of Aberdeenshire to Scotland’s Marine Directorate.
According to the report, offshore generation infrastructure for the project will include up to 67 wind turbines, a network of up to 97miles (156 km) of inter-array cables (IACs), up to 22miles (35 km) of interconnector cables and subsea collectors, which would be used to connect wind turbines in clusters to offshore substation platforms (OSPs).
Offshore transmission infrastructure will include up to three OSPs with fixed foundations and up to four offshore export cables with a combined length of 199miles (320 km). Supporting transmission and generation infrastructure will also include scour and cable protection.
The fixed-foundation project will have a capacity of roughly 1 GW and will be located 27miles (44 km) to the east of Stonehaven in the East (E)3 plan option area (POA) designated in the ScotWind leasing round.
The offshore scoping report further outlines the approach to its required environmental impact assessment (EIA) including baseline data sources.
With the report, submitted to the Marine Directorate’s Licensing & Operations team, TWP is requesting a scoping opinion under environmental impact assessment (EIA) regulations.
TWP is now preparing to hold community consultation events in Aberdeenshire, in late October and in 2025, before applying for Section 36 and marine licences for Bowdun.
This comes days after TWP submitted its onshore scoping report for infrastructure on land associated with the Bowdun project to Aberdeenshire Council.
Bowdun wind farm will connect to the grid in Aberdeenshire, with the location where the project’s export cable will make landfall still being finalised. TWP has identified Benholm as the preferred landfall location.
The Bowdun project director, Ian Taylor, described the submission of the offshore scoping report as “a key step in the consenting journey for the development” of the project.
“We will continue to work alongside our many stakeholders in the region and will be sharing project information with the communities in Bowdun during visits to the area next month,” Taylor said.
The submissions of the onshore and offshore scoping reports come after TWP completed a 24-month campaign of offshore aerial bird and marine mammal surveys in February, followed by its completion of the benthic survey in May. The company described these as key environmental baseline surveys of the array area and export cable corridor, which will be used to support the impact assessment.
Onshore, wintering bird and intertidal surveys were completed earlier in 2024 while ecology surveys, which are expected to form a key part of the onshore environmental baseline assessment, are ongoing.
TWP is a joint venture between Belgium’s Deme Group (BR: DEME) and Aspiravi International, as well as France’s Qair Marine. The partners won the lease for the project in Crown Estate Scotland’s 2022 ScotWind leasing round.
TWP was also awarded a lease option to build the Ayre Offshore Wind Farm off the coast of Orkney and submitted the onshore and offshore scoping reports for that project in the first half of 2024.
Final investment decisions (FIDs) on both Bowdun and Ayre are targeted for 2028, pending the receipt of regulatory approvals, which TWP hopes to achieve in 2025. Construction would start sometime between 2029 and 2032.
Deme Offshore is the engineering, procurement, construction and installation (EPCI) contractor for both projects. In a blog post published in January, TWP said Deme would begin working with the company on its supply chain engagement this year.
Recommended for you
