Two floating Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) buoys have been deployed at the Scottish floating offshore wind projects proposed by the BlueFloat Energy and Renantis partnership.
A couple of days ago, the two EOLOS FLS200 LiDAR buoys were deployed at the partnership’s Broadshore site 50 km north of Fraserburgh and the Bellrock site 130 km east of Aberdeen.
Equipped with fully autonomous and remote sensing devices, the buoys will remain onsite for at least 12 months to capture accurate wind, metocean and atmospheric data and obtain insights on the site characteristics, which will help shape and inform the design of the wind farms.
“This is another exciting step for our Broadshore and Bellrock projects and brings us closer towards delivering commercial scale floating offshore wind projects in Scotland”, said Susie Lind, Managing Director of the BlueFloat Energy | Renantis Partnership. “These works will ensure that we can maximise the potential of our ScotWind projects with a detailed understanding of the environment and conditions at sea to feed the design process.”
As well as its 3.1GW portfolio of Scottish floating offshore wind projects – 900 MW Broadshore, 1.2GW Bellrock and the 1GW Stromar project it is developing in collaboration with Ørsted – the BlueFloat Energy | Renantis Partnership has recently been offered seabed exclusivity rights to develop two 99MW projects under the innovation arm of Crown Estate Scotland’s INTOG (Innovation and Targeted Oil & Gas) auction process.
The Sinclair and Scaraben projects, located north of Fraserburgh and next to the Partnership’s Broadshore development, will trial innovative foundation technologies, fabrication works and mooring systems with a view to maximizing opportunities for the Scottish supply chain, driving local investment and job creation.