A fire broke out at a major Scottish onshore wind farm under development by SSE Renewables, it has emerged.
Viking Energy, which is owned by SSE, confirmed to Recharge that emergency services had attended the 443MW project on the North Sea island of Shetland.
The operator provided details of the incident to The Shetland Times this week following discussion of it among a local action group, Stop More Windfarms on Shetland.
“Shetland Fire and Rescue attended the Viking Wind Farm site in the early hours of 29th December in response to a fire which had broken out next to one of the turbines,” said Viking Energy in the statement to Recharge.
“Nobody was harmed during the incident and the fire was quickly extinguished. A fault to a mobile temporary generator was identified as being the cause of the fire.”
“Procedures have been put in place to minimise risk of potential reoccurrences.”
The Viking Wind Farm is one of the largest onshore wind farms in the UK and SSE claims it will be the country’s “most productive” when finished.
It is being developed as a joint venture between SSE and the Shetland community.
The project is wholly owned by SSE with the community retaining an interest on the management board.
Construction work began in 2020 and is expected to wrap up this year.
When completed, it will boast 103 V117-4.2MW turbines and have capacity to generate around 2TWh of energy a year, enough to power around 475,000 homes.
