Following on from our work on the acoustic enclosures at Blackhillock for Siemens, we are now on the next door site with Siemens again, this time for The Beatrice Offshore Windfarm (BOWL) to create another two acoustic enclosures around the 245 Tonne Super Grid Transformers. These transformers, which were shipped by sea from Sweden, convert the power generated offshore into usable and transportable energy that can be efficiently transmitted by the grid to point of use.
Beatrice Wind Farm under construction
Beatrice Windfarm is in the Moray Firth, off the north-east coast of Scotland. It was first evaluated with a small-scale development during 2007 and in 2016 was subsequently given the go-ahead to expand. The completed wind farm will produce an enormous 588MW of electricity from the 84 turbines. This is enough to supply 450,000 homes. The Beatrice site itself is certainly not an easy one to work on being 22km from the Scottish coast and in 45m of water.
The Kimpton Acoustic Solutions job was at the substation located close to the cable landfall and their brief was to enclose the transformers to reduce their noise output by 20dB at 100Hz frequency. The enclosures have to be fully ventilated and allow personnel access for maintenance. This provides an immediate challenge to overcome – to allow air to flow and noise to remain contained. The solution was a natural convection system to deal with the heat load, rather than a forced air system which would mean more maintenance and breakdown risk. Never a good idea in such a remote location. The ventilation inlets and outlets were attenuated to minimise noise break out.
The acoustic enclosure still in its protective film around the Super Grid Transformers at Beatrice
Another interesting aspect of the project is that despite it enclosing transformers with literally thousands of volts running through them, we still needed to provide small 240V power as well as interior lighting.
The total project will take around 10 weeks on site by our build team, with some time before this to survey the site, create the drawings for approval and manufacture of the unit. Our team are hugely experienced in working in and around these Super Grid Transformers and all are both National Grid and Scottish Power authorised.
Our work will be completed in January 2018, and our site team are on programme despite the harsh Scottish winter weather. We will have an image of the finished project on here soon after!
There’s still tidying to be done but the Beatrice Supergrid Transformer Acoustic Enclosures are coming together well
Beatrice Windfarm image with thanks to Clean Energy World
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