Inch Cape Offshore Limited (ICOL) has appointed K2 Management (K2M), a renewable energy engineering and project management consultancy, as the lender’s technical advisor (LTA) for the 1,080 MW Inch Cape offshore wind farm in Scotland.
K2M is providing technical due diligence on all aspects of the project design, delivery, and operations, as well as providing a bank launch and financial close report for lenders.
The company’s involvement ensures that, despite the project’s scale and complexity, ICOL will be able to move forward with a business case to secure financial close, K2M said.
The partnership between ICOL and K2M follows on from an earlier twelve-month collaboration under which K2M provided an initial view on project bankability, design optimisation, and early-stage risk mitigation.
“With ever more sizeable projects in more extreme environments, both long-standing and emergent offshore wind developers and investors need – more than ever before – total clarity on the financial and development challenges that projects of this scale entail”, said Bethany Rowson , Senior Consultant at K2M.
Recently awarded a Contract for Difference (CfD) under the UK fourth Allocation Round, ICOL is a joint venture between Red Rock Power Limited and Irish energy company ESB.
Inch Cape offshore wind farm is located in the North Sea around 15 kilometres off the Angus coastline at a site covering an area of some 150 square kilometres.
ICOL initially planned to use wind turbines with a rated capacity of 9.5 MW. The removal of the 1 GW capacity cap, which occurred in August 2021, will allow the developer to select the most powerful turbines on the market, possibly with ratings in excess of 15 MW within the consented parameters.
Siemens Energy- Iemants consortium will deliver the offshore and onshore substation package while Fugro already started with the nearshore surveys.
With up to 72 turbines, the offshore wind farm will be Scotland’s largest single source of renewable power when built, generating the equivalent of the annual demand of more than 1.7 million homes, Inch Cape said.