Aberdeen Bay

The Aberdeen Bay project, marketed as the European Offshore Wind Deployment Centre (EOWDC), is a small-scale offshore wind test and demonstration facility sited roughly 3 km off Blackdog / Aberdeen in northeast Scotland with an installed capacity of about 93.2 MW from 11 Vestas/MHI Vestas V164 turbines. Delivered by Vattenfall and partners and brought into full commissioning in September 2018 (first power July 2018), the project was built to trial next‑generation turbine and foundation technology at commercial scale and to generate operational learning for the wider industry. Its headline innovations were the pairing of very large (V164 series) rotors — two units were uprated to 8.8 MW while the remainder operate at 8.4 MW — with suction‑bucket jacket foundations, the first large application of that foundation type. Construction contractors handled suction‑bucket jacket installation, scour protection and cable works; export power is brought ashore to the onshore Blackdog substation (project sources record 66 kV interarray/export cables). The site has been used for R&D and environmental monitoring programmes supported by EU and regional partners, and Vattenfall operates an Aberdeen‑based O&M team. The development has remained a demonstration/test centre rather than a large commercial phase-out project and is frequently cited in the industry as an early example of combining very large turbines with alternative foundation concepts.