As you might have heard, the expansion of the Burbo Bank wind farm is well underway.
You’ve probably heard the pile driving over the last week or so? I’m writing this now at 9:30 Saturday and I’ve been hearing it since about 8am. Last Sunday evening it could be heard after 11pm. I understand the noise can be heard in other parts of Wirral, such as Irby.
I contacted Dong Energy, the company behind the wind farm, to ask about the works and received this reply from James Platt:
Offshore construction has started at our Burbo Bank Extension wind farm, located off Liverpool Bay. The first stage involves piling the foundations for the turbines into the seabed.
This work can cause some noise so we have provided information about this at a number of public locations in the area and have held public exhibitions to explain what is going on. We are also continually measuring the noise and vibrations at three locations around the coast.
We are aware of specific concern about the timing of piling work undertaken at the weekend. We apologise for any disturbance caused and are now reviewing the schedule for this work with a view to mitigating future issues.
The foundation nearest to the coastline has now been completed and piling this foundation was challenging as seabed conditions meant we needed to use a high level of energy to drive the pile in. We therefore hope the impact from the noise and vibration will be reduced going forward. We plan to finish all of the piling work by the end of July.
If you go down to the promenade you can see the new yellow turbine bases out in the sea. I understand that they’re shipped out from the Cammell Laird ship yard at Birkenhead as this photo from Iain shows:
Comments welcome.
Leave a Reply