UK: Ofgem Reveals Six Bidders in West of Duddon Sands Tender Process

Ofgem E-Serve has announced the six bidders which have successfully qualified to compete for the high-voltage transmission link for the West of Duddon Sands offshore wind farm. Ultimately the winning bidder will own and operate the link for the next 20 years.

Today’s announcement sets out the longlist of bidders which will compete, as part of a competitive tender process run by Ofgem E-Serve, to own and operate the high-voltage transmission link for the West of Duddon Sands offshore wind farm. Two of the longlist bidders are new players that have previously not bid in earlier tenders. The link is valued at £311m*. The next stage of the process is to select a shortlist of bidders who will go through to the final bid stage.

This second transitional tender round has £1.4 billion of transmission assets being tendered under the GB offshore transmission regime. It follows the success of the first tender round for £1.1 billion of transmission links, which attracted almost £4 billion of investment appetite.

Ofgem E-Serve’s Managing Director, Robert Hull said:”The strong interest in competing for the West of Duddon Sands transmission assets is further proof that the offshore regime is successfully encouraging investment, attracting new players and ensuring competition in the offshore transmission sector.”

The next tender round is Tender Round 3, which is expected to commence later in 2013.

The longlist of bidders that have qualified to proceed to the Qualification to Tender stage are:

•  Balfour Beatty Equitix Consortium (a bidder group comprising Balfour Beatty Investment Ltd and Equitix Ltd)
•  Blue Transmission (a bidder group comprising Macquarie Capital Group Ltd, Barclays Infrastructure Funds Management Ltd, Mitsubishi Corporation and Frontier Power Ltd)
•  John Laing Investments Ltd
•  National Grid Offshore Ltd
•  Skanska (a bidder group comprising Skanska Construction UK Ltd and Skanska Infrastructure Investment UK Ltd)
•  Transmission Capital Partners (a bidder group comprising Transmission Capital Partners Limited Partnership and International Public Partnerships Ltd)

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Press Release, February 21, 2013; Image: DONG Energy