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• Case Studies
• Dampier port upgrade
• Skilled Park
• Greater Gabbard wind farm

The world's biggest offshore wind farm Greater Gabbard is a £1.5billion 500MW offshore wind farm under construction about 23 kilometres off the east coast of England.

SKM has been involved in the project for more than four years, providing services including design, engineering and environmental impacts, drawing on professional skills and expertise from several SKM offices.

SKM has had a major role in determining and optimising the wind farm electrical infrastructure and produced the functional specifications for the major items of electrical plant. We have also represented the client during the tender negotiation stage with a variety of equipment suppliers. SKM is currently playing a significant role within the client's engineering team offering specialist electrical services during the design and construction phase of the project.

The wind farm will comprise 140 3.6MW wind turbines installed across two shallow sandbanks in water depths of 24 metres to 34 metres, connected into two offshore substation platforms. The wind farm output will go ashore via a three-circuit transmission line operating 
at 132kV, each about 50 kilometres long.

The wind farm will generate an average of 1,750 GWh of clean electricity, which is equivalent to five per cent of the UK Government's 2010 target and equivalent to an annual offset of more than one million tonnes of CO₂.

For SKM, an exciting aspect is that the UK Government would like to see the equivalent of 50 Greater Gabbards consented and built over the next 12 years to meet its renewable energy targets.

The wind farm will connect into a new onshore substation built adjacent to Sizewell nuclear power station in Suffolk. The construction of the onshore substation is under way and the first phase of the offshore works are due to commence in March 2009.

The first phase of the project will be exporting power late 2009, with final completion in 2011. The project was initially a joint partnership between Airtricity and Fluor, but Airtricity was recently bought by Scottish and Southern Energy – another SKM client, which now owns the whole project.