UK Offshore Wind Farm Now Equipped with Scour Protection Doubling as Marine Life Habitat

RWE has installed around 75,000 reef cubes developed by the nature-inclusive technology designer ARC marine at the Rampion offshore wind farm in the UK, in what the Rampion owner says is a “global first”. The cubes are a specially eco-engineered scour protection solution for wind turbine foundations, and this represents their first full-scale deployment at an offshore wind farm.

The solution is designed to protect the energy infrastructure from strong currents in the subsea environment, while creating new and extending existing living marine habitats, RWE says.

The reef cubes, ranging in size from 15 to 35 centimetres, were installed over the last few days at the base of one of the Rampion turbines by the project’s contractor Rohde Nielsen. It is the first real-world deployment of ARC marine’s patented Reef cubes as scour protection at an operational wind farm, according to RWE.

The developer says that at just one of the Rampion turbines, the reef cubes are providing a habitat surface area of 25,000 square metres. 

The deployment is part of the Reef Enhancement for Scour Protection (RESP) pilot that RWE and ARC marine announced in July this year.

This is not the first time the two companies have cooperated on installing the eco-engineered scour protection.

Last year, RWE and ARC marine installed 180 reef cubes for testing at RWE’s 48 MW Kårehamn offshore wind farm in Sweden.

The RESP pilot will now move into a monitoring phase, with ecological and geophysical surveys to be conducted between 2026 and 2030. The surveys will be performed to assess the cubes’ performance as a scour protection system and to study how marine life interacts with the structures over time. 

RWE and ARC marine will share ecological and engineering data collected through the pilot project from 2026.

The 400 MW Rampion offshore wind farm comprises 116 Vestas 3.45 MW wind turbines installed at a site spanning 70 square kilometres, located between 13 and 20 kilometres off the Sussex coast in the English Channel.

The offshore wind farm was officially commissioned in November 2018.

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