Building Beatrice
After around seven years of development, the project went in to the construction phase in May 2016.
Beatrice was essentially three construction projects in one comprising of:
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Offshore construction
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Onshore construction
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Development of the Operations and Maintenance facilities in Wick
Offshore construction
Building an offshore wind farm is a complex and challenging task, particularly when it comes to the offshore element of construction.
For Beatrice, the offshore construction work included:
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Installation and connection of the subsea inter-array and export cables
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Installation of turbine foundation piles and jacket substructures
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Installation and commissioning of the wind turbines
You can find out more about the offshore element of building Beatrice by clicking here.
Onshore construction
The onshore construction activity was significant and included:
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The construction of a dedicated substation at Blackhillock, in Moray (pictured)
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Preparing the 20km onshore export cable route from Portgordon on the Moray coastline and Blackhillock and the installation of the cable itself
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Constructing the cable landfall point at Portgordon and connecting the subsea export cable to the onshore underground cable
You can find out more about the onshore construction work by clicking here.
Construction at Wick
Around £20m was invested in Wick while renovating the waterfront buildings that would become our long term operational home and re-purposing a disused section of the harbour itself.
The work included:
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Renovating the 200 year old Thomas Telford designed buildings which were in a significant state of disrepair
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Creating a state of the art Operational facility within the renovated buildings
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Re-purposing a disused corner of the harbour and installing the necessary infrastructure to provide berthing for up to six Crew Transfer Vessels
You can find out more about the works in Wick by clicking here