Abstract
A brief overview of the post construction environmental monitoring at North Hoyle Offshore Wind Farm undertaken by npower renewables; and tentative conclusions of the monitoring results.
The North Hoyle Offshore Wind Farm is located 6-7 km off the coast of Rhyl in North Wales (Figure 1) and was the first commercial scale offshore wind farm operational in UK waters. It comprises thirty 2MW wind turbines giving a total electrical output of 60MW. The offshore works include 30 foundation mono-piles, transition pieces and Vestas V80 machines with associated inter turbine cabling together with two export cables to shore. All cabling is buried to a nominal depth of 1.5m.
Inception of the North Hoyle Project began with the development and construction of the meteorological mast in 1999, followed by development of the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) in 2001 and its subsequent submission in early 2002.
The Environmental Statement for North Hoyle Offshore Wind Farm predicted there would be no deleterious impacts on the physical and biological environment, including the ecologically important Dee Estuary. Monitoring undertaken from 2002 has subsequently compared results against the baseline set out in the Environmental Statement.