Nigg Yard Mega-Turbine

 
 

An open invitation to Alastair Kennedy of Global Energy Group.


At the public meeting in Cromarty on the 8th of March, Mr Alastair Kennedy of Global Energy was shown a copy of our original web page - see here and was asked if it was mischievous and he replied that it was misleading. We believe if anything it understates the size of the turbine and will go on to give the basis for our view below. When we heard that this statement was made we wrote the following email to Mr Kennedy as of the 21st March 2012 we have written twice but not had any reply.


 

Now we can use this rig to give another sizing. The rig is listed as the GSF Galaxy I in a number of references for example  on the BBC Web page on Nigg. The Transocean web page for Transocean’s GSF Galaxy I gives the height of the legs as 560ft - which is 171m and as the photo shows it is not floating when the photo was taken it is standing on the legs. The depth of the dock is given as 15m in a number of documents - such as the Highland Council Nigg Development Master Plan So we can assume that approximately 15m of leg is below the water (obviously depends on where it is standing in the dock and the tide at that moment) but give or take this will be about right. So take 15m from 171m and you get 156m. One minor error in this is that the turbine will stand on the dockside not on the water surface - but again that will make the turbine appear *higher* not lower.


So if you live in Cromarty, take a look out of the window at the jack-up rig and remember that a 204m turbine will be almost 50m taller than that again.


If anyone thinks we have made an error in this analysis then please email us.


As we have said before Global Energy is a good local employer which is respected in the area and genuinely brings jobs but GE also has a responsibility to be clear about its proposals.


Finally - if you want to see what one of these massive structures looks like in real life - have a look here - to see an Enercon 200m turbine being assembled - see the car next to it for some idea of scale. 

The largest onshore turbine in the UK is proposed for Nigg directly across the water from Cromarty

What a 204m turbine would look like - if you don’t think that looks big, look at the size of the transit van - or alternatively click here to see how big the shed is up close.

Here is the visualisation that we used and standby in fact we believe it uses a turbine picture that is significantly smaller than it should be.

Why we believe our visualisation is not misleading


1. Position.


Firstly the position, of the turbine. The powerpoint slide show used by GE Group in Cromarty at the public meeting in March 2012 had both a site map and a conceptual image neither showed the turbine, but the location indicated (with a wave of the pointer) was the same general area as the anemometer mast that GE have applied for planning permission for - see the extract from the planning application shown.


Which is directly on the waterfront and to the left of the big shed as viewed from Cromarty. This is the general area where we have placed the mock up image of a turbine in the above picture.


  1. 2.Size


There are two issues here - what size of turbine are GE going to use and is the picture representative of that.


As our original web page said, Mr Kennedy has put in writing to the Nigg Awareness group that they were considering a turbine of “likely to be in the area of 148/204 metre maximum height” at the Cromarty meeting on the 8th of March it is reported that on several occasions Mr Kennedy confirmed they were going to use an “offshore turbine” and he went on to say these “were currently in the range 150m to 200m.”


There doesn’t seem much doubt then that they are considering a turbine of this size, that only leads us to assume that it is our representation of that size that Mr Kennedy thinks is misleading.


So lets check that together....

We originally used as a scale the height of the eaves of the big shed. This data point (43m) was taken from several published documents on Nigg Yard - for example this one: Nigg Yard Brochure.


And then scaling the wind turbine picture to be a little less than five times that. However this is an underestimate as the shed is almost 400m back from the turbine and this is significant when the viewer is on the sea front at Cromarty, as of course distant objects appear smaller and the shed is nearly 20% further away from the viewer than the likely position of the turbine. We did not correct for that so the turbine in the original picture should look bigger. You can see the layout on the google image here: Google Satellite image.


Now of course Global Energy have conveniently provided a new way of measuring, they have parked a new Jack-Up rig in the dock.

Transocean’s Galaxy GSF I in the dock at Nigg