Wood Thilsted chosen for ScottishPower Renewables’ East Anglia Hub

Wood Thilsted, which has worked on monopile foundation designs for pioneering US and European offshore wind farms, will design foundations for more than 200 14+ MW Siemens Gamesa turbines that will stand in waters more than 50 m deep in the East Anglia Hub, off the Suffolk coast, England.

The turbines on East Anglia ONE North, TWO and THREE that form the 3.1 GW East Anglia Hub will be among the world’s most powerful and productive, generating more than 7.5% of the UK’s 40 GW target for offshore wind power by 2030 and a key part of the UK’s race to net-zero, a green recovery post-COVID-19 and action on climate change.

East Anglia Hub will build on the success of ScottishPower Renewables’ flagship East Anglia ONE project, now more than a year into its operations. East Anglia THREE has consent and results of the planning process for East Anglia ONE North and TWO are expected by January 2022.

The contract award comes weeks before all eyes turn to COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland, where world leaders will converge to discuss how to tackle climate change.

Energy minister, Greg Hands, described offshore wind as “the lynchpin in our efforts to reach net-zero” at Renewable UK’s (RUK) Global Offshore Wind Conference and Exhibition, with RUK chief executive, Dan McGrail, calling for support to further build scale and, importantly, speed, reflecting on a development process that can take a decade to deliver a single farm.

The partnership of ScottishPower Renewables and Wood Thilsted pivots on a shared ethos to bring down the levelised cost of energy (LCOE) by foundation design improvements with a keen focus on installability and safety.

The scope for the Wood Thilsted team – whose mission is to support projects like East Anglia Hub to optimise their design, bringing down the cost and speeding up delivery – includes monopile and transition piece design, detailed geotechnical interpretation and structural design across all three sites of the hub.

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Read the article online at: https://www.energyglobal.com/wind/19102021/wood-thilsted-chosen-for-scottishpower-renewables-east-anglia-hub/