Throwing the switch on Scotland’s largest offshore windfarm

theguardian.com:

Steve Wilson is a little windswept after stepping off a rocking boat in choppy North Sea waters. Wilson is programme director of Seagreen, Scotland’s largest offshore windfarm, which this week began producing power.

Wilson has just sailed an hour out to sea from Montrose, in Angus on the east coast of Scotland, with other local, interested parties. There, they witnessed a technician hop aboard one of the first turbines to feed power back to the mainland. A drone operator onboard protested about conditions that made it tricky to send up the machine. “We did deliberately decide to build it somewhere windy,” Wilson laughed after landing safety back on shore.

The £3bn Seagreen project, a joint venture between SSE Renewables and France’s TotalEnergies, is located 27km (17 miles) off the Angus coast. The first turbine of 114 was connected to the electricity network in the early hours of Monday morning.

The project promises to generate 1.1 gigawatts of electricity – enough to power about 1m homes – in its first phase. That’s equivalent to about 60% of Scotland’s current offshore wind output.

Its debut provides a rare bright spot for Britain’s energy supply as gas shortages in Europe have threatened to spill over into blackouts in the UK this winter and even higher bills for consumers.

However, the windfarm will not be fully operational until some point in the first half of next year.

“It’s unfortunate it’s not a short-term fix, but the long-term fix really is to deploy as much low carbon generation as we can,” Wilson said.

Ultimately the developers hope the site will produce enough renewable electricity to power 1.6m households. That would in theory cover two-thirds of Scottish households. However the electricity generated – which