But for Vattenfall, which owns 75% of the £150m ($230m) project, the site is an essential stepping stone on the path towards Round 3, allowing component suppliers to learn from the successes and failures of their next-generation kit so that developers and financiers can become comfortable employing them at commercial wind farms.
Eohgan Maguire, Vattenfall’s head of research for the EOWDC, says the project will be a “hugely important piece of the jigsaw puzzle for reducing costs”, given the shortage of full-scale offshore wind test facilities in Europe, and the number of component makers clamouring for berths at such sites.
For
