Caledonia Offshore Windfarm has awarded engineering consultancy Wood Thilsted a contract to develop the structural concept design for the 2 GW project’s turbine foundations.
The project is being developed in the Moray Firth by Ocean Winds and scheduled to be operational by 2030.
Wood Thilsted will use the ground and metocean data that has been gathered across the site over the past two years to produce modeling for the foundation designs.
“Caledonia is uniquely positioned to benefit from knowledge and understanding accumulated over the two decades that Ocean Winds has been investing in the Moray Firth,” says Mark Baxter, Caledonia project director.
“The excellent work from our previous projects ensures we have exceptional insights to optimize and de-risk the design from an early stage, supporting our delivery of this important ScotWind project and the U.K.’s 2030 offshore wind ambition. Although we are in deeper waters, some of the soil conditions at Caledonia are very similar to Moray East, where we have used an optimized jacket design. Moray West is constructed with extra-large monopiles – which push the global industry limit on size – providing cost and efficiency benefits in fabrication.”
Ocean Winds has previously worked with Wood Thilsted on projects in Poland and the U.S.