The onshore planning application for the Pentland Floating Offshore Wind Farm has now been submitted to the Highland Council.
Located 7.5km off the coast of Dounreay in Caithness, the development will be capable of providing clean energy to approximately 70,000 homes - equivalent to 64% of those in the Highland Council area - and when complete will be the biggest of its kind in the world.
Following public consultation, very few changes were made to the application for Planning Permission in Principle, which covers the project’s onshore infrastructure elements and includes the onshore application boundary, an Environmental Impact Assessment and visualisations of indicative substation locations.
If approved, the consent will enable the construction of an onshore substation and cables which will feed power from the floating wind turbines into the existing local grid network.
Project director Richard Copeland said: “The submission of the onshore planning application highlights another key milestone for Pentland, which will provide a testbed for new floating wind technologies while bringing a number of benefits to the local area.
“It was encouraging to see that the onshore plans were well received and very few changes were made to the application following local consultation.
“The onshore application submission comes following the submission of the offshore consent application to Marine Scotland in August this year - alongside these developments, we have continued to progress initiatives such as developing an operations and maintenance base at Scrabster harbour, consulting on our proposed community benefit fund to ensure the Caithness and Sutherland area benefits from the project, and supporting STEM careers through our regional bursary awards.”
The submission also comes ahead of a business breakfast event being held in partnership with Caithness Chamber of Commerce in Thurso on 23 November, aiming to introduce the project and the opportunities available to supply chain companies in the area.
The Pentland Floating Offshore Wind Farm is planned to be operational in 2026. The exact floating technological solutions for the project are yet to be determined, but a key consideration is building on existing technical expertise in Scotland to maximise the opportunity to local communities.
The project is being developed by Highland Wind, which is majority owned by Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, through one of its CI Funds, with Hexicon as a minority shareholder. Project development activities are being led by Copenhagen Offshore Partners, whose team is based in the Global Floating Wind Competence Centre in Edinburgh.
Separately, Mainstream Renewable Power and Ocean Winds have signed a £36m seabed lease agreement with Crown Estate Scotland for the development of a 1.8 GW floating offshore wind farm off the coast of Shetland.
The companies were appointed preferred bidder by Crown Estate Scotland during the ScotWind clearing process in August.
With secured development rights, Mainstream and Ocean Winds have named the project Arven Offshore Wind Farm.
The site output has the potential to power the equivalent of over two million homes and save around three million tonnes of carbon emissions each year.
Adam Morrison, country manager for Ocean Winds in the UK, said: “We are excited to be advancing the development of commercial scale floating wind farms off Scotland and delivering significant new volumes of clean energy for the country to meet its energy transition objectives.
“We look forward to listening to the many stakeholders who will have an interest in these projects as we start the development process to realise the potential of these projects.”
Mainstream recently combined with Aker Offshore Wind, bringing the latter's engineering capabilities and early mover position in floating offshore wind, with the former’s project development methodology and execution track record.
The company has already partnered with Ocean Winds in the joint venture KF Wind in South Korea and is in a consortium to bid in the upcoming leasing round for floating wind at Utsira Nord in Norway.
Ocean Winds is currently operating, building and developing three offshore wind projects in Scotland - the 950 MW Moray East, 882 MW Moray West and up to 2 GW Caledonia. With this award, Ocean Winds now has a total portfolio of 6.1 GW in Scotland.
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