The Scoping Report for the offshore and onshore elements of Project One was submitted to the Infrastructure Planning Commission (IPC) and published on the project website in November 2010.
The IPC collated all responses from the statutory and nonstatutory stakeholders into a formal Scoping Opinion which outlined aspects which should be assessed during the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) stage. This was received on December 24th 2010 and is also available on the IPC website.
In addition, SMart Wind published a Zone Characterisation (ZoC) document in January 2011 that provides a broad description of the physical, biological, socio-economic and cultural heritage characteristics of the Zone and a Zone Assessment Methodology (ZAM) document which describes the proposed methods to be used in assessing impacts across the Zone.
SMart Wind is conducting a comprehensive consultation exercise that will continue throughout the whole project.
During 2010 and 2011, various offshore surveys (geophysical, birds, marine mammals, navigation, benthic, fisheries and metocean) and desk based studies have been carried out to better understand the existing biological, physical and human conditions across both the Hornsea Zone and also Project One. These studies will further inform the baseline description of the EIA. Further details of the data gathered so far and plans for future work are described the March Issue 1 project update available for download here.
In order to transfer the electricity generated by the wind turbines into the National Grid transmission system, SMart Wind has secured a 1GW grid connection agreement at Killingholme for Project One. Killingholme substation is an existing 400 kilovolt (kV) National Grid substation located on the south bank of the Humber Estuary.