Offshore Construction Start

Construction of the Robin Rigg East and West offshore wind farms is reported to have begun in January 2008, marking the transition from development and consenting into full physical delivery of Scotland’s first commercial-scale offshore wind project. The Ofgem Preliminary Information Memorandum for the Robin Rigg Offshore Transmission Assets, issued in July 2009, states that construction of the Robin Rigg Wind Farms (East and West) began in January 2008, with work on the associated transmission assets having already started in July 2007. This places the formal start of the wind farm construction phase at the start of 2008, after transmission-related activities were already underway, and provides a regulator-backed anchor date for the onset of offshore build activities at the project site. Further detail on the nature and timing of offshore works is provided by a construction activities notice for Robin Rigg, which indicated that offshore construction activity was expected to commence in May 2008 and run through to spring 2009. That notice lists specific offshore tasks such as installation of foundations, export and inter-array cabling, and offshore substation installation, all scheduled within 2008–2009, aligning with the overall construction window implied by Ofgem’s summary. A separate project timeline collated by Tethys records that foundation installation started in 2007 and that the project reached full commissioning in April 2010, reinforcing that major offshore works were underway from the late 2000s and that January 2008 represents the effective start of the main construction phase for the offshore wind farm itself.