The project company Beatrice Offshore Wind Ltd (BOWL) – owned jointly by SSE (75%) and Spanish oil giant Repsol (25%) – narrowly beat Mainstream Renewable Power’s Neart na Goithe project to the punch, with the latter expected to submit its application imminently.

The Beatrice project will see as many as 277 turbines installed in Scotland’s outer Moray Firth, some 11km beyond the Beatrice demonstrator project, where two REpower 5MW machines have been spinning since 2007.

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