Blyth Offshore Wind Farm was a small coastal

wind farm A wind farm or wind park, also called a wind power station or wind power plant, is a group of wind turbines in the same location used to produce electricity. Wind farms vary in size from a small number of turbines to several hundred wind turb ...

located off the coast of

Blyth, Northumberland Blyth () is a town and civil parish in southeast Northumberland, England. It lies on the coast, to the south of the River Blyth and is approximately northeast of Newcastle upon Tyne. It has a population of about 37,000, as of 2011. The port o ...

, England.

History

Commissioned in December 2000 as a

pilot project A pilot study, pilot project, pilot test, or pilot experiment is a small-scale preliminary study conducted to evaluate feasibility, duration, cost, adverse events, and improve upon the study design prior to performance of a full-scale research p ...

, the project was developed by a consortium that included E.ON, Shell Renewables, NUON and Border Wind. E.ON were in charge of operating the farm. The project was the UK's first offshore wind farm, following the Vindeby in 1991 and Tunø in 1995, as well as being the largest offshore turbines erected in the world at the time. It helped pave the way for more than 600 bigger offshore turbines installed in British waters since then. The wind farm was decommissioned (as required by authorities) in 2019. One turbine went for spare parts, while the other was re-erected as a training facility in Blyth harbour. In 2012 there were plans to add a 100 MW test facility of 15 turbines at Blyth and nearby

Newbiggin-by-the-Sea Newbiggin-by-the-Sea is a quaint seaside town and civil parish in Northumberland, England, located on the North Sea coast. The town owes its proud heritage to having once flourished as an important trade route for shipping grain trade, grain fr ...

, supported by a government grant. The site would be administered by The National Renewable Energy Centre (

Narec Narec, since 2014 known as the National Renewable Energy Centre, is a part of the Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult, a British technology innovation and research centre for offshore wind power, wave energy, tidal energy and low carbon t ...

), based in Blyth. The test facility received planning consent in November 2013. It was planned with the

Vestas V164 The Vestas V164 is a three-bladed offshore wind turbine, produced by Vestas, with a nameplate capacity of up to 10 megawatts, a world record. Vestas revealed the V164's design in 2011 with the first prototype unit operated at Østerild in n ...

-8MW and 66 kV cables. The turbines have been decommissioned and replaced with five turbines further off shore. In 2021,

Tenaga Nasional Tenaga Nasional Berhad (, abbreviated as TNB; TENAGA, ), also known as Tenaga Nasional or simply Tenaga, is the Malaysian multinational electricity company and is the only electric utility company in Peninsular Malaysia and also the largest p ...

from Malaysia became part owner.

Design and specification

The farm consisted of two Vestas V66 2 MW turbines. The foundations consisted of 3m diameter monopiles. Due to the nature of the rock reef on which the farm was sited the process was to drill a 3.25m diameter socket into the bedrock. The piles were then positioned centrally in the socket and grout was pumped into the annulus to complete the foundation.

References

External links

LORC Knowledge - Datasheet for Blyth Offshore Wind Farm
{{Portalbar, England, Weather, Renewable energy Wind farms in England Power stations in North East England Blyth, Northumberland 2000 establishments in England 2019 disestablishments in England Energy infrastructure completed in 2000