The Triton Knoll offshore wind farm project has raised concerns among the local communities in the past few months, so the developers want to make their plans clear.
Project manager Jacob Hain gave an update regarding the current status and plans for the 1,200 MW offshore wind farm in an interview for This is Lincolnshire news portal.
As the project will involve onshore cabling to connect the wind farm to the National Grid at Bicker Fen near Boston, Mr. Hain said that at this stage there are no confirmed cabling routes and the developers are working with East Lindsey District Council and Natural England to know what the constraints on routes will be.
Also, a large number of landowners granted access to the land so the surveys can be undertaken. He explained that they are working on ensuring the landowners that the type of the proposed infrastructure is not going to affect them in a damaging way.
Though the surveying is covering 1 kilometre wide areas, the cable width will be 60 metres. Therefore, there should be no fear of the land being unusable, as it can be returned back to its normal use after the installation is complete.
Furthermore, both AC and a variation on DC cables are being considered at the moment, with plans to carry out technical studies to find out precisely what those technologies involve.
As the Lincolnshire County Council recently announced that it will not support the Triton Knoll without detailed information about the onshore infrastructure, Mr. Hain said that the information in the planning application was the best they could give at the time. He added that if the planning inspectorate requires further information about the onshore infrastructure status, they will ask for it at the preliminary hearing and the company will do as said.
At the end, Mr. Hain brought out the future steps of the project by saying that, after a period of consultation by the planning inspectorate, they expect that a recommendation to the Secretary of State will be made on the project’s development at the end of the year.
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Offshore WIND staff, July 24, 2012; Image: RWE