An aerial inspection of Rampion Offshore Wind Farm’s underground onshore cable route has revealed that evidence of the temporary construction has almost completely disappeared from view, thanks to the successful reinstatement of the land it passes through. See the video and pictures here.
The 27-kilometre Rampion cable route makes landfall under the beach at Brooklands Pleasure Park in Worthing and follows a course under the railway, the A27 and the River Adur. It then heads northeast past the Old Cement Works, across the South Downs and the Weald up to the final connection point at a new substation next to Bolney National Grid Substation in Mid Sussex.
“We are thrilled to see how successful the reinstatement of land on the Rampion cable route has been,” said Dan Allen-Baines, General Manager for the operating Rampion Wind Farm.
Rampion’s cable route reinstatement was completed in 2019, and the project is now halfway through a 10-year monitoring and management plan, meaning the land will continue to be monitored every year until 2029 with additional planting and seeding undertaken, if required.
Chris Tomlinson, Stakeholder Manager for the extension project, Rampion 2, highlighted that, “The practical experience gained from the work undertaken delivering the Rampion project has been fed into the planning for Rampion 2.”
The Rampion cable route is entirely underground and the overhead lines and pylons shown in the video footage are all connected to other power stations or grid networks unrelated to the Rampion Wind Farm.
Tomlinson continued, “During our consultation for Rampion 2, many people asked us why we were not using the existing Rampion cables. This is because the existing Rampion cables do not have the capacity to accommodate three times more power from Rampion 2 to connect the project to the transmission network. We will bury the new Rampion 2 cables underground, so any inconvenience will be temporary, during construction only.”
Once built, Rampion 2 could power the equivalent of over one million homes1 and reduce carbon emissions by around 1.8 million tonnes2 per year. Put another way, Rampion 2 could generate the equivalent of around three-quarters of all the electricity demands for the whole of Sussex3 and, combined with the operating Rampion Wind Farm, could power the entire electricity demand for Sussex.
The Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, the Rt Hon Ed Miliband MP, awarded consent for the Rampion 2 Offshore Wind Farm in April. The Rampion 2 team will continue to keep the local community informed on the project’s progress and will be working hard over the coming months and years to make sure they are aware of the onshore and offshore activities associated with building the wind farm.
Rampion 2 is being developed by RWE, one of the UK’s most established and experienced renewable energy producers and a global leader in offshore wind. RWE is developing the project on behalf of a joint venture company which includes a Macquarie-led consortium, a subsidiary of Enbridge Inc. (a leading North American energy infrastructure company) and RWE.