Retail giant Amazon will buy more than half the output of an 882 MW, $3 billion offshore wind farm under construction off Scotland under a power purchase agreement signed on January 30 with a joint venture developer led by utility company ENGIE. The deal follows a 100MW power deal the Moray West project reached with Google in 2022, for a total of 65% of the project’s power generated to be purchased by the US-based tech companies .
Developer Ocean Winds, which also includes utility EDP Renewables, expects the project to be operational by the end of this year or early 2025. Fast-track construction of the wind farm began last fall. In comments to the online publication rechargeBautista Rodríguez, CEO of Ocean Winds, called the Amazon deal “an innovative and unprecedented route to market for an offshore wind farm.” He said his energy delivery plan is “ambitious” but also has corporate and customer support that will keep the project “firmly” on its fast track.
The company did not detail its fast-track approach other than to say it would award a relatively small number of large contracts for different aspects of the project.
“There is a fantastic team working on the project and my role is to bring out the best in them, provide guidance and support to ensure that the intricate four-dimensional puzzle comes together securely in the right sequence,” said project manager Pete Geddes.
World record turbines predicted
Turbine manufacturer Siemens Gamesa has been awarded the contract to produce and install 60 large 14.7 MW wind turbines, a world first. They would be the largest installed at a non-Chinese offshore wind facility.
Manufacturing of the first 108-metre-long turbine blade finished in December, with the company set to produce a total of 180 blades. “With each blade slightly longer than an international football pitch, the scale of the engineering is impressive,” said Adam Morrison, manager of Ocean Winds UK.
Other contractors include Belgium-based DEME, which began installing turbine monopiles last October that it expects to complete by early spring. “In an industry breakthrough, this challenging project will be the first time that extra large monopiles of up to 2,000 tonnes will be installed during the winter period,” the company said. It said it will deploy its dual-phase, motion-compensated pile clamp and a vibratory hammer, also for the first time, to overcome the weaker soil layers, also carrying out bolting and grouting work for monopile-turbine connections. The monopiles will each be 10.5 m in diameter and 100 m long.
Since last year, monopiles have been manufactured in China and also in Spain.
Netherlands-based contractor Boskalis is using a 4,000-tonne crane and a new upward hinge and motion-compensated pile clamp for the monopile installation at Moray West as well. The company is also installing two substations designed by Siemens Energy at the site.
Neither DEME nor Boskalis disclosed the value of their contracts for Moray West, but described them as “significant”, ranging from $63 million to $190 million.
The installation of the transition pieces began on January 23, with completion expected in June.
European contractor Nexans is responsible for the design, manufacture and installation of onshore and offshore export cable systems for the project from December 2021. Fugro GB Marine and Scotland-based Vysus Group they have a contract for geotechnical investigations of the site.
Amazon pushes for clean energy by 2025
Lindsay McQuade, Amazon’s chief energy officer, said projects like Moray West will play a critical role in decarbonising the company’s operations. The retailer is on track to meet its global energy target with 100% renewable energy by 2025, five years earlier than a previous target, it said.
Amazon is the biggest buyer of renewable energy in Europe and the UK, Ocean Winds said.
Developers’ 950 MW Moray East offshore wind farm opened in 2018
Power purchase agreements are a way to support large offshore projects outside of government contracts, while allowing energy-intensive companies to meet climate targets, a board member of German energy company EnBW said after the Salzgitter Group, Europe’s largest steel producer, committed to buy 50 MW of output from its 960 MW He Dreiht offshore wind project off Germany.
Offshore wind power purchase agreements are expected to grow exponentially increasing by 25% by 2030, say consultancy Pexapark and German energy agency Dena.
In March 2023. Amazon also signed a supply agreement with Iberdrola to support large-scale energy projects, including two of its offshore wind farms in the Baltic Sea: the 476 MW Baltic Eagle and the 300 MW Windanker. “It’s a long-term agreement to supply Amazon with 1,000 GWh of green energy” from Baltic Sea projects, said Ignacio Galan, Iberdrola’s executive chairman.
