Oil giant's first big UK offshore wind bet hits full power
Experience developing Seagreen will help TotalEnergies as it looks to expand its portfolio of offshore wind projects, says oil major’s CEO Patrick Pouyanné
French supermajor TotalEnergies saw one of its first big forays into offshore wind come good as the final turbine came online at the 1.1GW Seagreen project off Scotland.
TotalEnergies and co-owner SSE announced today that Seagreen – the largest offshore wind farm in Scotland – is now fully operational and running at its design capacity.
That follows the last of the 114 Vestas V164-10.0MW turbines standing in Scotland’s North Sea beginning to spin.
It bought that stake from utility SSE, which led the development and construction and will now operate Seagreen for its expected 25-year lifetime.
Seagreen can generate annually around 5TWh, or enough renewable electricity to power almost 1.6 million homes, equivalent to two-thirds of all Scottish homes.
Patrick Pouyanné, chair and CEO of TotalEnergies, said he was “very pleased to see Seagreen generating at full power, making it TotalEnergies’ biggest offshore wind farm worldwide.”
He said Seagreen is a “new step in delivering our strategy of building a world-class, cost-competitive portfolio of renewable energy to deliver clean, reliable and affordable power to our customers.”
Working with SSE on the project has also allowed TotalEnergies to “strengthen our offshore wind expertise,” said Pouyanné, something that will be “extremely useful for our future projects” in the UK, US and Germany.
TotalEnergies has a 13GW portfolio in offshore wind, with projects in the UK, South Korea, Taiwan, France, the US and Germany. It also plans to participate in tenders in Norway and Poland.