The offshore wind farm Walney 1 was completed earlier this year and Walney 2 is on track to complete construction by the end of the year.
Each phase comprises 51 turbines and the total output will be 367MW. The extension that we are consulting on would see an estimated 750MW added to that, making Walney in total one of the biggest offshore wind farms in the world.
The consultation takes part at an early stage in the planning process. DONG Energy goes out to all the local communities, people, businesses and government and show the different possibilities for the extension.
“We want to make sure we take into account any issues that people may have as we continue planning,” says the project manager Malcolm Johnson. “Whilst it will never be possible to take into account every single comment and concern we want to take into account as many as practicable.”
He is running the first round of consultation events that took place in five different locations in the North West of the UK and he is pleased that so many people attended:
The next stage is to take all of the responses from the community to the proposals and produce a consultation report. Then there will be further round of consultation during the summer next year.
[mappress]
Source: dongenergy, September 21, 2011