The BlueFloat Energy-Nadara Partnership has completed wind and metocean monitoring campaigns at its 900MW Broadshore and 1800MW Bellrock floating offshore wind farm sites in Scotland.
The two-year campaigns involved the deployment of Eolos’ FLS200 floating LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) buoys at the Broadshore Hub site, located 50km north of Fraserburgh, and the Bellrock site, situated 120km east of Aberdeen.
These buoys collected high-quality wind, wave, current and atmospheric data, providing critical insights into site conditions.
The data gathered during the campaigns is essential to inform the engineering design of the wind farm projects and to reduce the uncertainty of the energy yield estimates, maximising project value.
Partnership portfolio director David Robertson said: “Completing these metocean campaigns is a pivotal step in our journey to deliver commercial-scale floating offshore wind projects in Scotland.
“The data gathered will enable us to optimise turbine layouts, foundation designs, and mooring systems, ensuring the resilience and efficiency of our projects in the challenging North Sea environment.”
The metocean data will be integrated with findings from recent geophysical and geotechnical seabed surveys conducted by Acteon, further enhancing the understanding of site conditions and supporting the refinement of project designs.
The Broadshore and Bellrock projects are part of the Partnership’s 4.4GW portfolio of Scottish floating offshore wind developments, which also includes the 1.5GW Stromar project in collaboration with Orsted.
The partnership is also developing two 100MW innovation projects, Sinclair and Scaraben, which lie adjacent to Broadshore to form the Broadshore Hub.
These projects will seek to trial innovative technologies along with the development of a pilot community ownership model with the potential to shape the future of community benefit from floating offshore wind projects throughout the whole of Scotland.