Over the past two decades the UK has become the world’s leading offshore wind energy producer. Not only is it responsible for 40% of all offshore wind generated electricity, it is set to quadruple the installed capacity by 2030. Its journey to becoming a world leader began in 2000 with construction of just two Vestas V66 turbines, at a site off the coast of Blyth in Northumbria.
In the first of a two-part episode we go back to those turbines and to a time where a crane driver called Bobby Hazel was called in to lift in these towers into position – something that no operator in the UK had done before. And last year when Fugro began decommissioning these pioneering structures for RWE Renewables, Bobby returned to the North Sea to take them down.
This episode is made in partnership with Engineering Matters.