ABS Group Provides Natural Hazards Risk Management Support for Project Fortress, Quinbrook's New 350 MW Solar Power Facility

The UK’s electricity price is currently the second highest in Europe, and the drive towards net-zero is making the investment in generating more affordable, renewable, and clean electricity a strategic target for the UK.

Project Fortress (formerly Cleve Hill Solar Park) is under development by Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners (Quinbrook) and is currently the largest facility of its kind in the UK.

Located on the North Kent coast near Graveney Marshes, the development covers 175,000 ha (43,2434 acres). Once completed, Fortress will have 350 megawatts (MW) solar photovoltaic array for electricity generation, an associated energy storage facility, a substation and a switchyard for onward transmission into the National Grid. 

A Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project (NSIP), Fortress was granted development consent by the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy in May 2020.

Project Fortress is forecast to generate enough renewable power each year to meet the needs of 100,000 UK homes and to help reduce carbon emissions by 164,450 tonnes in its first year of operations alone.

ABS Group supported Quinbrook on this project, performing a Natural Catastrophe (NatCat) Probable Maximum Loss (PML) and Maximum Foreseeable Loss (MFL) study for the proposed solar power and battery storage facility, required by the organization to support their investment and insurance placement decisions.

The NatCat study helped Quinbrook better understand the facility's exposure to selected natural hazards and helped evaluate various design measures which could be incorporated to address vulnerabilities such as flooding, windstorm, lightning, hail and snowstorm perils for a range of return periods or scenario events.

Given the coastal location of the development, understanding the exposure and associated mitigations built-in to the design concerning flooding was critical, with the study considering not only present-day flood potential but also future flood potential from climate change and sea-level rise throughout the life of the development into 2070.

Construction for Project Fortress is scheduled to begin in Summer 2022.

About ABS Group

ABS Group of Companies, Inc. (www.abs-group.com), through its operating subsidiaries, provides technical advisory and certification services to support the safety and reliability of high-performance assets and operations in the oil, gas and chemical, power generation, marine, offshore and government sectors, among others. Headquartered in Houston, Texas, ABS Group operates with more than 1,000 professionals globally. ABS Group is a subsidiary of ABS (www.eagle.org), a leading marine and offshore classification society.