25 Years Later: The offshore wind pioneer who helped start it all

I started my career with Powergen based at a coal-fired power station site (Ratcliffe), but the company was also involved in early onshore wind power projects and then became a partner in the Blyth project. I was really interested in the potential of wind energy, so when a job vacancy became available to join a small team of half a dozen people working on wind power including the Blyth project, I leapt at the opportunity.

I recall going out onto the vessel and being struck with the awesome scale of the engineering. In retrospect the Blyth turbines were fairly quaint, at less than 100m tip height compared to modern units in excess of 3 times that, and approaching 10 times the power output. But at the time we kept impressing people with the statistic that the rotors were as big as the wingspan of a 747 jumbo jet!

Back in the beginning the focus was on demonstrating technical feasibility, and some people doubted if, or how, effectively it could be scaled up into a commercial reality. The seabed licencing, consenting and regulatory frameworks didn’t exist. The policy and supporting frameworks needed to be created and refined through industry collaboration with the government and The Crown Estate to deliver success. Over the years the UK has made huge strides with each subsequent offshore round, and the financial support mechanisms, firstly the Non-Fossil Fuel Obligation, superseded by the Renewables Obligation then the Contracts for Difference mechanisms which were needed to build scale and momentum, ultimately making offshore wind a competitive source of clean power generation.

Well, a small confession: after Blyth I did a few years of onshore wind development in Scotland, so not quite the full quarter century! In 2008 I returned to a burgeoning offshore sector, working as a development lead on Humber Gateway then subsequently Rampion, Rampion 2, a secondment looking at Floating wind supply chain and skills and currently in a commercial role on the Norfolk Vanguard and Boreas projects. Each project has been unique, bringing its own challenges, new people in the team, new stakeholders and each subsequent one has pushed the boundaries more as to what is possible.

Every big journey starts with a single step. The offshore wind industry has faced many technical, commercial and regulatory challenges along the way from its inception but has shown incredible tenacity, perseverance and ingenuity to become the vibrant success story it is today. Collaboration and ensuring lessons are learnt at each stage have been key to the sector’s growth. I think all these qualities the industry has demonstrated translate to the personal level as well: keep focussed on the goal, when things don’t work as planned try another approach, collaborate with others who bring something new to the picture, ensure that any setbacks are turned into learning opportunities.

I think the next steps are proving that floating wind can be commercialised which would then open up huge new areas of sea where generation could be located. There needs to be convergence to an optimal concept from hundreds of different ideas, that can be fabricated economically and at large scale and volume. It feels like floating offshore wind is at a similar stage of maturity to where fixed offshore wind was after Blyth, which had given the impetus for The Crown Estate’s first formal round of seabed leasing.

Also expanding into different route to market models, such as generating hydrogen fuel, which would ‘untether’ schemes from the grid and open up many more opportunities.