Construction activities on the Scottish Inch Cape offshore wind farm are scheduled to start this April with construction work within the project’s export cable corridor.
According to a Notice to Mariners from the project team, the work will commence with operations at the export cable landfall site on or around 1 April 2025 with construction work within the main array site expected to start this summer.
The Inch Cape offshore wind farm is located 15 kilometres off the East Coast of Scotland and covers a total of 150 square kilometres.
The 1,080 MW project, owned by ESB and Red Rock Renewables, will comprise 72 Vestas V236-15.0 MW turbines installed on a mix of monopile and jacket foundations, an offshore substation, and two 85-kilometre AC export cables, delivering power to an onshore substation , currently under construction at Cockenzie, East Lothian.
The project is set to be operated and maintained out of a purpose-built facility at the Port of Montrose, in Angus.
Construction of the offshore substation jacket foundation and the offshore platform is nearing completion at the Smulders yard in Wallsend. Fabrication of the project’s export cables is also now underway, along with preparatory surveys along the cable route in advance of the cable installation, which will start this year.
Inch Cape was first awarded planning consent in 2014. The offshore wind farm has a 50-year lease with Crown Estate Scotland and has secured 15-year contracts with the Low Carbon Contracts Company (LCCC) through the UK government’s Contract for Difference (CfD) auctions in 2022 and 2024 .
ESB and Red Rock Renewables reached financial close on the 1.1 GW offshore wind project in January this year and signed contracts with the main suppliers.
Inch Cape is expected to produce first power in late 2026 and to be fully commissioned in 2027.
Once operational, the Inch Cape offshore wind farm will generate almost 5 TWh of renewable energy each year, according to the developer.