Dogger Bank: construction off North East coast on track for the world’s biggest wind farm

SEVENTEEN wind turbine foundations out of a planned 95 have so far been installed in the first phase of the giant Dogger Bank wind farm, 130kms off the North East coast, with the installation of turbines due to start next year.

Project bosses say they are still on track to produce their first power from the Dogger Bank A turbine cluster next summer, with commercial-scale production to follow about six months later.

Dogger Bank B will follow 12 months later, and Dogger Bank C should start to come on-stream during 2025, for the entire £9billion project to hit its target of full-scale operation by 2026 – when it will provide roughly 5% of the UK’s entire electricity need (enough to power about six million homes).

A spokesman for SSE Renewables, the company leading the construction phase of the project, told Climate Post: “Fabrication of the offshore platforms for B and C is ongoing in Thailand, and fabrication of foundations for Dogger Bank B, cables for Dogger Bank B and turbines for Dogger Bank A continues in various facilities across Europe.

“However, much of our construction work on-site, onshore and offshore routinely pauses during the winter, when the ground and sea conditions aren’t optimal.”

SSE Renewables have just produced their own video of progress to date, below.

Work is also continuing apace to build three convertor stations which will link the wind farm to the national grid at Redcar, Teesside, and in the East Riding of Yorkshire, as well as work on some onshore civil engineering.

One of the key fabrication facilities is over at Saint Nazaire – one of Sunderland’s twin towns, on France’s north-west coast – where GE Renewables Energy are building their massive Haliade-X 13-and-14-megawatt turbines.

A total of 277 of these turbines will populate Dogger Bank; 95 each at the A and B clusters, and 87 at C. A single rotation of just one of them generates enough power to run an average UK home for more than two days.

They will be shipped through the English Channel and up the coast, to arrive at Able Seaton harbour, on Teesside, which will act as the project’s marshalling harbour during construction.

This stage of the operation is just one part of the Dogger Bank project in which North East companies are playing key roles.

At Able Seaton, for example, Mammoet UK, a Dutch-owned company with three North East bases including at Thornaby, Teesside, were announced just last month as the onshore heavy lifting and transport specialist to be given the contract for moving the giant turbines around the harbour.

Many other North East businesses have also already benefited from Dogger Bank elsewhere, such as the building of the project’s operations and maintenance base at the Port of Tyne, in South Shields, where 95% of the work has been awarded to local ‘micro, small and medium’-sized businesses.

Project bosses say that to date, over £4.4million has been spent with supply chain companies in South Tyneside, including Castle Building Services and Thompsons of Prudhoe.

Numerous other sub-contractors from across the region, including Newcastle-based Chemplas and Durham-based Wyn Construction have also been engaged on the project’s further £3.1million local spend.

One of the earliest critical roles to be delivered by North East-based expertise was the specialist surveying of the seabed structural strength at the Dogger Bank site, which was done by Newcastle-based Ryder Geotechnical.

This work was to assess the seabed at the Dogger Bank site, to ensure it is strong and stable enough to handle the turbine foundations – not to mention the weight of the giant vessel Voltaire, which is installing them using its extendable legs, which are lowered to the seabed to give maximum stability during installation.