Thistle Wind Partners (TWP) is an Edinburgh-based business, founded with a focus on Scottish offshore wind development. We are currently developing 2GW of floating and fixed-foundation offshore wind capacity at our ScotWind leasing sites: the Ayre Offshore Wind Farm (Orkney) and the Bowdun Offshore Wind Farm (Aberdeenshire). Our founder companies – DEME Group, Qair, and Aspiravi – bring experience from a global renewables portfolio that is distinguished by offshore engineering excellence and a track record of delivering local economic benefit.
EVENTS
December 5th, 8am to 11am MacKays Hotel, Wick
Our ScotWind projects
In January 2022, Crown Estate Scotland awarded TWP two ScotWind leasing sites for offshore wind development. These are our first and only projects to date. Over the next decade, TWP will develop and build:
By mixing floating and jacket foundations, our projects represent a broad and exciting opportunity for technology developers and the Scottish supply chain. Our target is to spend more than £2.4 billion in the Scottish supply chain over both projects. The wind farms will also play an important role in accelerating Scotland’s, the wider UK’s and Europe’s transition away from fossil fuels, producing energyequivalent to that used by more than two million households.
Image: Bowdun Head and Dunnottar Castle on the Aberdeenshire coast. Credit: Elaine Stewart.
HOW WE WORK
TWP’s founders have forged a successful track record in engaging local content in their renewables projects across the world.
Both Qair and DEME have supported ports in building capacity for renewables, as at Port La-Nouvelle in France, and Qair has achieved majority local content at its Eolmed Floating Wind Farm in the Mediterranean.
In Belgium, DEME was a partner and shareholder in the development of Renewable Energy Base Ostend (REBO), which is now a heavyweight terminal for project cargo, offshore construction and decommissioning of offshore installations (oil and gas, renewables).
For our Scottish offshore wind farms, our ambition is to spend £2.4 billion of our budget in the Scottish supply chain by 2033. To support this goal, we are looking to expand our Scottish academic partnerships and supply chain in the coming years.
To find out more, you can read our Supply Chain Development Outlook Statements for Ayre Offshore Wind Farm and Bowdun Offshore Wind Farm.
TIMELINES
There are two major milestones ahead in the development of the Ayre and Bowdun projects over the next decade:
Offshore infrastructure – we plan to use next-generation turbines within the range of 15MW to 25MW (15MW is the highest capacity per turbine today). Our engineers are reviewing the turbines and foundations destined for the market of 2029 (when we begin building the wind farms). We are also conducting geophysical surveys of the seabed at both sites, as well as environmental assessments. Our contractor APEM is conducting two years’ worth of aerial surveys of marine mammals and seabirds using LiDAR tracking (accurate to within 10cm). A range of other offshore environmental surveys, metocean and geotechnical will continue over the coming years to support both consenting and engineering development.
Onshore infrastructure – this is also needed so that the offshore wind farms can feed energy into the National Grid and deliver clean, renewable energy to consumers. Each wind farm will require underground cables running from the shoreline to an onshore substation, and then connecting into one of the network provider’s substations. The start of construction for onshore infrastructure for Ayre is expected to be in 2029, subject to the conclusion of the Holistic Network Design Follow-Up Exercise by National Grid ESO.
Image: APEM aerial survey. Credit: Chloe Winterbottom.
If you have any queries about our wind farm projects, TWP’s community engagement, careers with TWP, or anything else, please fill out our general enquiries form.