E.ON encourages local people to come along to a drop-in exhibition that the company is holding to provide details of the final design and construction plans for the Rampion wind farm. Members of the project team will be available to answer questions. Following the election, the project was given the green light last month. Construction and preparatory work for the onshore cable route, which will take power from landfall at Brooklands Pleasure Park in Lancing to the onshore substation at Twineham, is now beginning. Initial work will include ‘ecological mitigation’, prior to construction beginning on the underground cable route from late July. The event will be held at Jubilee Hall, Lancing Parish Hall, 96 South Street, Lancing BN15 8AJ on Tuesday 16 June 2015 from 2:00pm to 8:00pm. Parking is available behind the hall, accessible via Chester Avenue. Press release.
Category Archives: Trench
Rampion goes ahead
Meet the Buyer
E.ON will be hosting a(nother) Rampion Offshore Wind Farm Meet the Buyer event on 29th January from 10:00am until 3:00pm. The venue is to be confirmed but will be between Worthing and Shoreham. The aim of the event is to inform local companies who are interested in supplying products and services relating to the onshore cabling and onshore substation elements of the project.
Rampion rampallion
Fred F. Mueller outlines the rationale for the move:
With just a 48-hour notice delivered by a personal phone call to Ms. Merkel on a Saturday, the CEO of E.ON, the largest German and European power producer, let it be known that the company had decided to split itself in two, one part grouping fossil and nuclear power generation and a second part encompassing the “politically correct” activities in the field of “renewable” energies. Sort of a “Bad E.ON” / “Good E.ON” move. The intention is to get rid of the “bad” part as soon as possible by putting it up for sale. At the same time, this also means the “good” part will cease to be duty bound to ensure a stable power supply under all circumstances. Obviously, such a liability is not enforceable from an entity whose only power sources are unstable wind and solar power plants. In a nutshell, the message behind this move is that the silverback of the “big four” German energy producers who group the bulk of the country’s conventional and nuclear power production is about to close shop at short notice.
Updated 11th December.
Galloping off into the sunset
RWE bailed out of the Atlantic Array last November. ScottishPower Renewables abandoned the Argyll Array the following month. SSE withdrew from Galloper back in March this year. And now RWE has followed suit. The Adonis Blue caterpillars and the Bronze Age cross dyke on Tottington Mount may yet survive.
Rampion briefing
If you have a technical interest in the difficulties that beset the construction of an offshore wind farm like Rampion, then the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) is running an event that may be worth your time. It will cover:
- Engineering challenges
- Ground model and concept selection
- Multi vessel geotechnical and geophysical ground investigations
- 3D ground modelling
It takes place on 23rd September from 6:00pm–8:00pm at the Holiday Inn in Gatwick. You don’t need to be a member of ICE to attend, but you do need to register with them and book. More here.
The Rampion Trench page
Hitherto our reference page on the trench, listed in the sidebar menu, simply comprised two large maps. Following the government’s decision to permit construction, the page has been augmented with the content of our recent posts dealing with the inspectors’ report (on the traffic implications and on Tottington Mount) as well as several links to relevant government documents, most importantly The Rampion Offshore Wind Farm Order 2014. It is now listed under ‘The Environment’ submenu (it previously appeared under ‘About Our Village’).