Salamander Offshore Wind Farm, being developed by a joint venture between Ørsted, Simply Blue Group, and Subsea7, has been awarded planning permission in principle for the onshore aspects of its proposed floating project in Scotland.
The submission was made to Aberdeenshire Council for the onshore substation and associated infrastructure in August 2024 under the Town and Country Planning Act (Scotland) 1997.
A second application , to the Energy Consents Unit of the Scottish Government for the wind farm’s energy balancing infrastructure, which includes a battery storage that will help to balance the electricity grid, has now been validated, and is progressing through assessment, according to the project company.
Salamander is also awaiting a decision from the Scottish Government’s Marine Directorate on their Section 36 award for the offshore array and associated licenses .
“We are incredibly proud to have secured an almost-unheard-of unanimous approval in record time – only 7 months after submission. We have achieved a number of significant ‘firsts’ with this consent – the first combined onshore substation and battery consent and the first consent of any of the innovation projects awarded exclusivity agreements under INTOG,” said Hugh Yendole , Project Director for Salamander.
The 100 MW Salamander floating wind farm is one of the 13 projects selected in Scotland’s Innovation and Targeted Oil and Gas (INTOG) leasing round. The developers of the innovation projects under the INTOG round signed exclusivity agreements with Crown Estate Scotland in May 2023.
At the beginning of this year, the Scottish project, which is planned to be built at a site located 35 kilometres off the coast of Peterhead, completed a metocean campaign.
The campaign started in October 2023 with the deployment of two floating SEAWATCH Wind Lidar Buoys and a Wavescan buoy, which gathered meteorological, oceanographic, and environmental site data.
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