Located 7.5 km off the coast of Dounreay in Caithness, the development will be capable of providing clean energy to approximately 70,000 homes (equivalent to 64 percent of those in the Highland Council area) and when complete will be the biggest of its kind in the world.
Following extensive 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. When 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.
“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” said Richard Copeland, Project Director. “It was encouraging to see that the onshore plans were well received and very few changes were made to the application following local consultation. At every stage of this project, we’ve aimed to consult as comprehensively as possible to ensure the development remains considerate of the region and its residents. 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. Taking place in Thurso on 23 November 2022, the event will introduce the project and the opportunities available to local supply chain companies in the area.
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