Scotland has a well-earned reputation for having given the world its best Civil and Mechanical Engineers, Steel Fabricators, Systems and Hardware Engineers.
Now, the nation that gave the industry pioneering innovators such as James Watt and Thomas Telford, can proudly boast another feat of engineering.
Hywind Scotland, the first floating wind farm in the world, has started to deliver electricity to the grid.
The 30MW facility, which is made up of five giant turbines and located 25km off of Peterhead in Aberdeenshire, can power around 20,000 households.
Operated by Statoil, in partnership with Masdar, the turbines can be used for water depths up to 800m.
At 175m from sea surface to blade tip, they are almost as tall as the Queensferry Crossing, extending another 78m below the surface and chained to the seabed.
Energy firm Statoil has been working on developing this project for more than 15 years and its success this month opens up areas that for years were considered inaccessible.
The onshore operations and maintenance base is in Peterhead, while the operations HQ is located in Great Yarmouth.
Linked to the Hywind Scotland project, Statoil and partner Masdar will also install the fabulously named Batwind. This is a 1MWh Lithium battery storage solution with the potential to mitigate any service intermittency and optimise output.
This entire project now puts Scotland leagues well ahead of its rivals in harnessing the potential of renewable energy technology.
And this is great news if you’re looking to boost your engineering career.
Recently, there have been major cost reductions in onshore and seabed-fixed offshore wind sectors and, being cost-competitive and opening up new locations, Hywind Scotland now offers global market opportunities for energy.
Scottish suppliers have contributed to the project from its original development phase right through to full production and remain a part of the team, steering new opportunities for long-term potential.
This could open the important renewables sector to fresh talent, with many more engineers transferring their skills from other sectors, most obviously Oil & Gas.
No matter what your particular engineering passion or specialism may be – whether in software, electrical or mechanical – now is the perfect time to reenergise your career.
If you think a new role could put your world in a spin, why not check out all of the latest Engineering vacancies at s1jobs?