The 6-month examination process for SMart Wind’s Project One was formally concluded on 10th June 2014. The Examination Authority now have up to 3 months to write a report setting out their conclusions on the application, and stating the reasons for those conclusions.
The report will make a recommendation to the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change who will make the decision on, or before, 11th December 2014 on whether to grant development consent. All documentation relating to the examination process is available on the Planning Inspectorate website here.
Project One represents the first project to be developed in the Hornsea Zone with a total generation capacity of up to 1,200 MW. The promoter of Project One is SMart Wind while the joint applicants for the Development Consent Order (DCO) for Project One are Heron Wind Limited, Njord Limited and Vi Aura Limited. These companies are owned jointly by Mainstream, Siemens and DONG Energy.
Following analysis of the turbine supply chain, SMart Wind confirmed during the examination process that the 3.6 MW turbine will be removed from the project design envelope leaving a 5-8MW turbine envelope which reduces the overall maximum number of turbines within the Project, from 332 to 240. The maximum generation capacity remains at 1.2 GW and the maximum rotor tip height of the turbines remains at 200 m.