Abstract
Moray Offshore Windfarm (East) Limited (Moray East) is a joint venture partnership between OceanWinds Offshore, Diamond Generating Europe and China Three Gorges and has been established to develop, finance, construct, operate, maintain and decommission the Moray East Offshore Wind Farm. The Moray East Offshore Wind Farm is located on the Smith Bank in the outer Moray Firth. It is located 12 nautical miles (NM) (approx. 22 km) from the Caithness Coast, covers an area of 86 square nautical miles or 295 square km, and ranges from 37 - 57 m in water depth. The Development consists of 100 Wind Turbine Generators (WTGs), three Offshore Substation Platforms (OSPs), inter-array and interconnector cable circuits within the Wind Farm, and three offshore export cable circuits, in addition to onshore infrastructure. The three export cable circuits run from the Moray East Wind Farm to a landfall location in Boyndie Bay on the Aberdeenshire Coast.
The Moray East Offshore and Onshore Transmission Infrastructure (TI) will be transferred to an Offshore Transmission Operator (OfTO) in early 2023, and thereafter any responsibility related to these assets will be transferred to the OfTO following the sale transaction. This Offshore Transmission Infrastructure (OfTI) Project Environmental Monitoring Programme (PEMP) has been prepared by Moray East to inform Marine Scotland and relevant stakeholders of the proposed environmental monitoring for the OfTI assets, comprising the 3 OSPs and export cables.
Moray East seeks agreement that the information provided meets the requirements of the relevant conditions attached to the Moray East OfTI Consents (as set out in more detail in Table 1-1 below). A separate PEMP has been prepared to address the environmental monitoring programme referent to the Moray East Offshore Wind Farm (including the WTGs, inter-array and interconnector cables), the Wind Farm (WF) PEMP. The scope of monitoring for this PEMP includes seabed scour and local sediment deposition, benthic communities, diadromous fish, and marine mammals, in line with the relevant conditions discussed in Section 1.5.
Read the Wind Farm Project Environmental Monitoring Programme report here.