Vestas V236-15 MW components begin arriving at Dundee as Inch Cape moves to turbine phase

The first turbine components for the 1.1 GW Inch Cape offshore wind farm arrived at the Port of Dundee in early August 2026, marking the project's transition from foundation work to turbine pre-assembly^[1]. The deliveries open a roughly three-month marshalling window before offshore installation is scheduled to begin in November^[1].

What is arriving and in what order

A total of 576 components will be offloaded at Dundee, broken down as follows^[1]:

• 288 tower sections (four per turbine, across 72 units)
• 72 nacelles
• 216 blades, stacked in sets of three

Tower sections are being delivered first, followed by nacelles, with blades arriving last. The tallest assembled tower will reach 127.4 m - roughly three times the height of Dundee's tallest building. Each turbine will carry three blades measuring 115.5 m.

Six heavy transport vessels are involved in the supply run, including Bravewind - which carried the first load - alongside Boldwind, Tony Stark, and Vestvind, with shipments expected almost weekly through late September.

The port setup

Inch Cape took operational control of Forth Ports' Port of Dundee during summer 2026 and completed enabling works before the first vessel arrived. More than 130 personnel will work across a 170,000-square-metre yard, handling deliveries, marshalling, assembly, and pre-commissioning before turbines are loaded out for the offshore site. Teams from Vestas and local contractors are already on site. The port will function as a pre-installation yard for approximately 12 months.

Inch Cape will be the first UK project to install the Vestas V236-15 MW turbine, the same platform that EnBW deployed at the 960 MW He Dreiht farm in the German North Sea - where a blade failure in July 2026 triggered an ongoing Vestas root-cause investigation. Inch Cape has not disclosed any impact on its own schedule from that probe.

Installation vessel and timeline

Cadeler's newbuild jack-up Wind Mover will carry out the offshore turbine installation campaign, transporting turbines to the site in batches of four^[1]. The installation programme is expected to take approximately 249 days. The farm sits 15 km off the Angus coast at water depths of 45-55 m.

The foundation campaign is already complete. Seaway7's heavy crane vessel Seaway Alfa Lift finished installing all 54 monopile transition pieces at Inch Cape in early August 2026, clearing the way for the remaining jacket foundation work. The project confirmed it remains on schedule for first power in late 2026 and full commercial operations in 2027.

Inch Cape Offshore Limited is an equal joint venture between Red Rock Renewables and Irish utility ESB. The project reached financial close with more than £3.5 billion in funding from a 22-bank consortium and holds a 15-year contract for difference secured in the UK's 2022 CfD auction. SSE Energy Markets has agreed to offtake 50% of the farm's output for at least 15 years under a route-to-market PPA signed in September 2024.

The pace of component deliveries through September - and whether the Vestas blade investigation produces any guidance relevant to the V236 fleet - will determine whether the November installation start holds.