At our first round of consultation in November 2023, we presented our preferred option to connect Buchan Offshore Wind to Peterhead. The subsea cables would come ashore near Rattray, to the south of the Loch of Strathbeg Nature Reserve and north of the St Fergus Gas Terminal and its associated offshore pipelines.
We selected this location after careful consideration and appraisal of several sites along the Aberdeenshire Coast, examining environmental constraints, intertidal and onshore infrastructure requirements and engineering and geotechnical constraints.
We will need to build a transition bay near the landfall point, to connect the offshore cables to onshore cables. This will be underground, and the land will be reinstated once construction is complete. We identified several potential routes for underground cables between the landfall point and Peterhead, and assessed each in terms of technical suitability and how it might impact the environment, biodiversity, hydrology, cultural heritage, land use and proximity to homes. We presented these routes and our potential substation search areas at our first round of consultation in November 2023.
Since our first round of consultation we have continued technical assessment work and taken account of feedback received from local people and stakeholders such as Aberdeenshire Council, Scottish Environment Protection Agency, Historic Environment Scotland and NatureScot.
We have refined our onshore cable route boundary to take account of feedback received, in particular, where it should pass Keyhead and St Fergus, and we have reduced our substation search areas from three to two.
Our refined underground cable route heads west from the landfall point, and now has the option of turning south and crossing the A90 before Keyhead, passing between St Fergus Moss and the St Fergus gas terminal. It continues south, staying west of St Fergus, crosses under the River Ugie and passes between the former RAF Longside airfield and Blackhills before turning south-east to arrive at a new project substation, in the Peterhead area.
Two substation search area options have been shortlisted following feedback received at our last consultation.
We have also received confirmation that our grid connection point will be at the existing Peterhead substation. This will allow us to identify an onshore cable route from the project substation to the grid connection point at Peterhead substation.
We are also co-ordinating with other projects as part of our ongoing work, with the aim of understanding and reducing potential cumulative effects on the environment and communities.