Published: 14 May, 2025
The BlueFloat Energy / Nadara Partnership has announced it has successfully concluded comprehensive two-year wind and metocean monitoring campaigns at its Broadshore Hub and Bellrock floating offshore wind farm sites, marking a significant milestone in the development of Scotland’s next generation of renewable energy infrastructure.
The campaigns involved the deployment of EOLOS’ FLS200 floating LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) buoys at the Broadshore Hub site, located 50 km north of Fraserburgh, and the Bellrock site, situated 120 km east of Aberdeen.
These buoys collected high-quality wind, wave, current and atmospheric data, providing critical insights into site conditions. The data gathered during the campaigns is essential to inform the engineering design of the wind farm projects and to reduce the uncertainty of the energy yield estimates, maximising project value.
David Robertson, Portfolio Director of the BlueFloat Energy / Nadara Partnership said: “Completing these metocean campaigns is a pivotal step in our journey to deliver commercial-scale floating offshore wind projects in Scotland.
“The data gathered will enable us to optimise turbine layouts, foundation designs, and mooring systems, ensuring the resilience and efficiency of our projects in the challenging North Sea environment.”
The metocean data will be integrated with findings from recent geophysical and geotechnical seabed surveys conducted by Acteon, further enhancing the understanding of site conditions and supporting the refinement of project designs.
The Broadshore (900 MW) and Bellrock (1,800 MW) projects are part of the Partnership’s 4.4 GW portfolio of Scottish floating offshore wind developments, which also includes the 1,500 MW Stromar project in collaboration with Ørsted.
The Partnership is also developing two 100 MW innovation projects, Sinclair and Scaraben, which lie adjacent to Broadshore to form the Broadshore Hub. These projects will seek to trial innovative technologies along with the development of a pilot community ownership model with the potential to shape the future of community benefit from floating offshore wind projects throughout the whole of Scotland.
www.bluefloat.com and www.nadara.com
Completion of metocean campaigns at Broadshore and Bellrock sites is a pivotal step towards delivering commercial-scale floating offshore wind projects in Scotland.
