In at the deep end

Late next year, a diverse group of engineers from across Europe will converge on a remote oil field 25km off the east coast of Scotland and begin construction of the world’s first deep water offshore windfarm.

The team will install two 5MW wind turbines in the 44m deep water alongside the Beatrice field oil platform in the Moray Firth. Standing 90m above sea level, yet barely visible from the distant shore, the turbine’s giant blades will sweep across an area roughly the size of two football pitches.

Expected to go live in October 2006, the massive structures will initially be used to provide electricity for the Beatrice installation. But Talisman, the oil and gas company that operates the oil field and is heading the project, has mooted the possibility of building a larger commercial windfarm that would use the existing infrastructure to pipe energy back to shore.

The £41m (£28m) demonstrator, while partly funded by Talisman, is also at the heart of Europe’s largest renewable energy R&D programme, the DOWNVind (Distant Offshore Windfarms with No Visual Impact in Deepwater) initiative. This EU-funded project aims to find ways of making deep water offshore windfarms economically viable.