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Offshore wind will continue to bring 'huge opportunities' for East Anglia
It is shaping up to be an exciting year for ScottishPower Renewables in East Anglia, says Steve Hodger, head of operations and maintenance for the firm's UK offshore wind farms.
It's five years since East Anglia ONE (EA1) – our flagship 714MW wind farm, 43km off the Suffolk coast – came into operation amidst a global pandemic.
Around 20% of the turbine installation and almost half the turbine connection work for EA1 were completed during lockdown, with ScottishPower and our partners transforming how we worked to get the job done.
This included switching to smaller teams, creating crew 'households' who lived and worked together and new welfare protocols – to name just a few – to ensure we completed the project on schedule.
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It was a completely unprecedented time, and I was so proud of everyone involved as the wind farm came to life and moved into the operations and maintenance (O&M) phase.
I've been thinking back to that period as we saw the start of offshore construction for East Anglia THREE (EA3) get underway recently.
Unprecedented in a completely different way, EA3 will be the biggest offshore wind farm built and operated by ScottishPower and the Iberdrola group – and will be the second largest in the world when it comes into operation.
Steve Hodger, head of operations and maintenance for SPR's UK offshore wind farms (Image: SPR) While EA1 was very much a trailblazing project at the time, it's clear to see how much the industry has grown and matured over the last five years alone. Take the turbines on EA3 – at 14.7MW, each of the 95 individual turbines will generate more than double the clean energy produced by an EA1 turbine.
With total capacity of 1.4GW, EA3 will produce enough green electricity to power the equivalent of more than 1.3 million homes.
The monopiles alone – the first of which can now be seen in the North Sea standing at 83.89m tall, 10.6m in diameter and weighing 1,800 tonnes –can claim a new offshore wind industry record as the largest installed to date from a jack-up vessel in Europe.
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The skills needed for the industry have also evolved as projects have become larger and technology continues to advance. This means the variety of roles we need to build, operate and maintain our wind farms continues to expand, which makes offshore wind an attractive industry for more people than ever before.
It's a fantastic industry, and being involved in delivering homegrown clean, green energy, while building teams of local people working on projects near their homes really matters to me.
There are huge opportunities on our doorstep, especially with the plans for our new £8 million O&M base for EA3 – expanding our footprint in Lowestoft and delivering much-needed skilled jobs and investments into local communities, both directly and through our supply chains.
These opportunities will only grow as we continue to build the next generation of clean power and operate in the region for decades to come.
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