I am going via phases once I’m obsessive about information concerning the Viking Vitality Wind Farm in Shetland. Maybe this compulsion to gather data is fuelled by my disbelief – I can not comprehend the dimensions; I can not perceive the best way some individuals, together with those that gave the inexperienced gentle for consent right here in Shetland, unthinkingly settle for data with out questioning the veracity of the information, from the potential penalties of the human and environmental influence concerned in addition to the ethics behind selections to impose inappropriate developments on communities with out honest processes for resolution making.
Company propaganda is attribute of extractivism, the phenomenon that’s taking place beneath our noses in Shetland and all through Scotland. I’ll write extra about extractivism in future. On this publish I merely wish to share some information, proudly offered by Viking Vitality of their common newsletters circulated via our weekly paper, The Shetland Instances, and obtainable on the Viking Vitality website online.
Every wind turbine is assembled from ten sections: a base, the tower which includes 3 sections, 3 blades (60 meters in size every), a nacelle, a drivetrain and a hub; the entire weight is 456,228 kg. (Photographs: Roxane Permar, SSE Renewables, Vestas)
It’s tough to understand the dimensions of the generators. I share the {photograph} beneath with sort permission from Angela Irvine.
It took 6 months to move all of the elements to the wind farm website from the Greenhead Base in Lerwick with 280 convoys, 6 days every week,7 am to three pm, February to August 2023. A haulage firm from mainland Scotland offered the autos and personnel to undertake the journey, and a specialist crew from Police Scotland got here as much as co-ordinate the convoys, with the turbine producer Vestas being liable for safely managing the method of getting the elements from their factories to Lerwick after which to the Viking website. (Photographs: SSE, Shetland Information, The Shetland Instances)
The muse for every turbine required 24,084.6 cubic ft of concrete, the equal of roughly three common dimension 3-bedroom homes, crammed ground to ceiling, wall to wall – that’s roughly 1700 tonnes per basis (together with turret).
In whole 30,076 tonnes of cement had been used, which required 1,037 tanker masses delivered to Shetland after assortment in Aberdeen.
107,000 litres of water had been used per base, making 11,000,000 litres of water in whole used for the bases. 719 tonnes of aggregates had been used per every basis, 74,057 tonnes in whole. And, lastly, 564 tonnes of sand had been used per every basis, 58,092 tonnes in whole. The sand was imported from Glensanda (Oban) through boat to Lerwick Port; 10 boat masses in whole had been taken to Shetland.
I used to be staggered by the truth that there are 800 km of cables being put in underground simply to move the electrical energy from the completely different turbine arrays to the wind farm substation at Higher Kergord.
Moreover there will likely be many miles of cables, each underground and above floor, to take energy from Kergord to the substation in Lerwick so a little bit of the vitality can be utilized for Shetland. I’ve taken tons of of images of the cable laying.
And we are able to’t overlook the cables, each overground and underground, which can join the opposite onshore, and presumably additionally the offshore, wind farms proposed in Shetland. The overground elements are delivered by helicopter, subcontracted to Norpower whose employees all reside on the Scottish Mainland and fly out and in of Shetland to do the work, a course of typical of extractivist initiatives in distant geographical areas and used for this growth as effectively earlier initiatives in Shetland, together with the development of the Sullom Voe Oil Terminal and extra just lately the Shetland Gasoline Plant operated by TotalEnergies.
And lastly, in fact, there may be the 260 km subsea cable from Shetland to Caithness. Under are two pictures. The primary exhibits the HVDC cable being launched from the vessel NKT Victoria earlier than being pulled into place by the smaller boat at Weisdale Voe, Shetland. The second exhibits the NKT Victoria because it started to put the primary 100km of cable off the coast of Caithness. It’s price noting that just lately SSEN Transmission has requested a modification crucial for SSEN to hunt consent for extra rock to be added to the seabed as a result of it’s “thought that round 30 per cent extra rock will likely be wanted than initially anticipated for the safety of the subsea HVDC transmission hyperlink between Shetland and the Scottish mainland for areas greater than 12 miles away from shore. The cable itself has been laid, and the ultimate items of labor embody defending the hyperlink, akin to with rock. SSEN Transmission has consent for utilizing round 245,000 tonnes of rock outdoors the ’12 mile restrict’, however because of adjustments on the seabed it’s now anticipating utilizing almost 320,000 tonnes in these areas – a rise of round 30 per cent.”
Roxane Permar
December 31, 2023
