ABOUT
Beatrice, which became fully operational in summer 2019, was one of the largest ever private investments in Scottish infrastructure with a capital expenditure of around £2.5bn.
Beatrice is Scotland's second largest operational offshore wind farm, capable of generating enough wind powered electricity for up to 450,000 homes.
It is also one of the largest single sources of renewable energy generation in Scotland.
Located around 13.5km from the Caithness coastline, Beatrice has 84 Siemens Gamesa 7MW wind turbines and is operated and maintained by a team of up to 90 people from the Beatrice operations and maintenance base at Wick Harbour.
OUTER MORAY FIRTH
At its nearest point, Beatrice is approximately 13.5km off the Caithness coast in the Outer Moray Firth.
Wick Harbour is home to the Operations and Maintenance Base, around 45 minutes by Crew Transfer Vessel to the turbines.
POWER TO THE PEOPLE
Beatrice has 84 Siemens Gamesa 7MW wind turbine generators (588MW in total) and two Offshore Transformer Modules.
The electricity is transmitted via subsea cables to a point east of Portgordon in Moray and then to the Blackhillock Substaion via underground cables.
KEEPING THE LIGHTS ON
Beatrice is capable of generating enough electricity to power approximately 450,000 homes.
That's around three times the number of homes in the Moray and Highland regions.
EMPLOYING PEOPLE
Beatrice will require around 90 operatives to safely maintain and operate the wind farm during its operational 25 year lifespan.
Many thousands of people were employed during the 10 year peiod of development and construction.
INVESTING IN COMMUNITIES
The Beatrice Community Investment Fund is worth a total of £6m and intended to benefit communities in the Highlands and Moray.
The Beatrice Partnership Fund launched in December 2016 and the Local Funds launched in May (Caithness) and July (Moray) 2017.
RECORD BREAKING JACKETS
Our jacket substructures are among the deepest fixed foundations in use for an offshore wind farm anywhere in the world.
At up to 81m tall, they are taller than the Scott Monument in Edinburgh (60m) but only around 25m is visible above the water.
HEAVYWEIGHT STRUCTURES
The total weight of the 86 jacket substructures is nearly 83,000 tonnes. That's around the same weight as eight Eiffel Towers.
Add the weight of the piles and you have the weight of around 12.5 Eiffel Towers
REACHING FOR THE SKY
The wind turbines have a total height (maximum pile depth to the highest point of the blade sweep) of up to 288m.
The jacket substructures, on which the turbines stand, are up to 81m tall.
BLADES OF GLASS
At 75m long, the turbine blades are around 2m longer than an Airbus A380 aircraft but around 5m shorter than its wingspan. Laid end to end the 252 blades would stretch approximately 19km.
Blades were manufactured at the Siemens Gamesa factory in Hull and are made out of fibreglass, balsa wood and epoxy resin.
BRINGING IT ALL TOGETHER
During construction, turbine components were stored and assembled at the construction and marshalling port at Nigg.
They were then loaded onto specialist vessels and taken out to the wind farm for installation.