In October, EDF Energy Renewables established a new project office in Blyth to manage the construction of the Blyth Offshore Demonstrator wind farm, located around 6km off the coast of Blyth, connecting to a new substation being built on the site of the former Blyth Power Station.
The scheme’s 25‐strong project team has moved into the Blyth Workspace office centre to plan, manage and coordinate all the engineering and construction activities associated with the new development.
Marcel Sunier, Project Director said: “The new Blyth project office provides a single central location for all the project staff involved in the new development.
“This is a complex project and the Workspace office provides the ideal location to ensure that close communication is maintained between the project team and the specialist contractors involved in the different aspects of the scheme.
“We are also delighted to be moving into the heart of the Blyth community and will look to hold some meetings in the coming months for those local people who want to know more about the project. ”
Construction work has already begun on the onshore substation and offshore work will start in 2017 with the installation of the gravity base foundations, the offshore electric cable and the wind turbines. At its peak, there will be around 200 people working on the project.
For the first time in an offshore wind project, the turbines will be installed on self‐floating and submersible gravity‐base foundations and this will be the first project to use 66kV cable technology to connect the wind farm to the onshore substation.
When complete, the Blyth Offshore Demonstrator wind farm will comprise five MHI Vestas V164-8.0 MW turbines with a total capacity of 41.5MW, providing enough low carbon electricity to meet the average annual needs of 34,000 homes.