With eight Lobster Pot cameras, in three locations, and three shorter-duration shoots – so far, we’re capturing the epic scale of this large, complex project creatively, safely and efficiently.

Paul Childs, Communications Manager, UK Wind Power, said: “Lobster Pictures’ ability to capture complex procedures – and create accessible and interesting content – helps bring the technical aspects of the project to life for everyone, both internally at DONG Energy and externally, amongst the many stakeholders with an interest in the project.”

The Danish company, in partnership with Scottish Power Renewables, is installing 108 wind turbines in the Irish Sea. With a total capacity of 389MW, the turbines will provide enough clean renewable energy for more than 300,000 homes from 2014.

So far, we have placed eight Lobster Pot cameras across the project. Four are on 40 metre lighting towers at the new Belfast offshore wind terminal. This the first purpose-built offshore wind installation and pre-assembly harbour in the UK.

These cameras were installed safely with an extensive rope rescue plan in January. Here’s Steve enjoying the bracing January weather:

Our cameras there are filming and monitoring towers, blades and nacelles. These are brought to Belfast from manufacturing facilities in Denmark and Norway. Massive 60m turbine blades are attached together, and equipment is loaded on to a brand new, second generation jack-up barge built specifically for wind turbine installation – the Sea Installer:

The components are then taken to site and assembled – the vessel has capacity for eight turbines. Our cameras show the vast scale of the project quite well, note the shipping containers for comparison:

Two cameras have been in place at Heysham, Lanacashire, since May 2012. Here, the 46km, 155kV cables from the turbines connect to a substation. This regulates the power coming from the turbines and feeds into the National Grid.

Two more Lobster Pots are in Barrow-in-Furness, where DONG Energy are building a new Operations and Maintenance facility for the wind farm. The £4m centre will create 30 full time skilled local jobs.

We’ve also been shooting operations around the Heysham base and on Morecambe bay: cables coming ashore, substation units being craned into place, and more – using standalone cameras and tripods, and some of our six axis motion control unit for added impact. Here’s a rough cut of some of the first footage:

Morecambe Bay – rough cut from Lobster Pictures on Vimeo.

Here’s the timelapse footage from the project:

The work was carried out over four weekends to ensure minimum disruption to patients, and the flexibility of our Lobster Pot camera system meant that we could tailor a shooting schedule to match. As always, Lobster Vision provided live access to full-resolution stills from the camera and allowed the project team to follow all of the progress.

Since 2009, the hospital has managed to cut its carbon emissions by 15%, and the new solar installation will help to reduce this even further by generating a whopping 18,000 kilowatts of electricity each year – that’s 73,048 cups of tea!

For more information on the project, head over to the hospital’s official website.

The project includes an underground power station (252MW), two hydraulic circuits and a 108m tall arch-gravity dam, coming in to service in 2016. It will produce enough energy to save emissions of 450,000 tonnes of CO₂ per year – the same as generated by 200,000 cars.

Luke and Sara installed the camera this week – we’ve been lucky enough to be able to do this before the river diversion, so we’ll capture the whole build of the dam.

The camera, like the work, is running 24/7 – to construct the dam, they will have a two-year continuous concrete pour!

We particularly like the shots the camera is taking at night – the floodlighting gives a great effect:

(a larger version can be seen here)

For more information, please visit the project website