A massive electricity grid is being planned for the seabed in the central North Sea as part of a £20 billion project to power oil and gas platforms with green electricity.
Cerulean Winds has won the rights to develop projects aimed at reducing gas use in offshore facilities.
It aims to connect more than 400 offshore turbines with high voltage cables.
The company says the plan will involve 10,000 jobs, many of which could be in the supply chain in Scotland.
It hopes to have the infrastructure ready by 2028.
Dan Jackson, chief executive of the developer, said Scotland was among the world’s top investing countries for floating wind farms.
His company has formed a group of partners with experience in the sector, including NOV, Siemens Gamesa, Siemens Energy, DEME and Worley.
Hundreds of turbines are scheduled to be installed in the next 10 years at 20 offshore areas included in ScotWind’s round of developments, some anchored to the sea floor and some anchored to it with cables.
ScotWind will be connected to the national wilderness network. Energy companies paid £755m to Crown Estates Scotland, which duly passes the money to the Scottish Government, for the rights to the development.
Cerulean Winds’ subsea grid project is part of another round called Innovation, Targeted Oil and Gas (Intog), which covers an element of innovation in technology but provides mostly renewable energy to oil and gas facilities to reduce their use of gas to power their operations.
Rather than a series of direct cables between turbines and platforms, the offshore grid aims to provide reliability and flexibility in power supply.
Mr Jackson said the priority is to build up wind power for the oil and gas sector as quickly as possible, and as it grows, and then use it to provide power via long-distance high-voltage subsea direct current cables for onshore supply around Britain and for other purposes. export.
The plan is for three large connected marine areas in the middle of the North Sea covering approximately 400 square miles (1,000 square kilometres).
“Early electrification of oil and gas supports the country’s energy security, net zero employment and provides huge benefits to the supply chain and economy, creating 10,000 jobs,” he said.
“With our partners, we will accelerate access to green energy and provide the infrastructure for the next phase of life in the North Sea.”
“Build quickly”
He told the media: “We eventually have something comfortably in excess of 300 or 400 turbines. It was built in phases, and in phase one for oil and gas requirements.
“We have to build these urgently to give oil and gas green energy as quickly as possible, with flexibility and reliability.”
He said the sites would be “stepping stone” for building floating wind farms on a larger scale.
Mr Jackson added: “What we have been waiting for in Scotland, particularly those ports and yards that have suffered from the decline of the oil and gas industry, is for renewables to take off. That is what is happening now.
“Scotland’s supply chain base is there. When I say Scotland is now one of the best investable countries in the world for large-scale green energy infrastructure, one of the main reasons is that the supply chain base has been in place for its 50-year history in oil and gas.”
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