UK OFTO Tender Round 5 in October, 5 Offshore Wind Farms Included

UK’s energy market regulator Ofgem plans to launch Offshore Transmission Owner (OFTO) Tender Round Five (TR5) in October 2016 which will enable bidders to compete to own the transmission assets of five offshore wind farm projects.

The five offshore wind projects have a combined capacity of 2.3GW.

The Tender Round 5 will include the transmission systems of the 402MW Dudgeon offshore wind farm, the 336MW Galloper, the 580MW Race Bank, the 400MW Rampion, and the 660MW Walney Extension.

Ofgem plans to hold an information event in London related to TR5 and the five projects up for tender. The date of the event has not been disclosed.

Dudgeon is located 32km off the coast of Cromer in North Norfolk, and is being developed by Statoil ASA, Masdar, and Statkraft AS.

Galloper is a project equally owned by RWE, Siemens Financial Services, UK Green Investment Bank and Macquarie Capital. The wind farm is situated 27km off the east coast of England, adjacent to the Greater Gabbard project.

DONG Energy’s Race Bank is located in the North Sea, 27km north of Blakeney point off the coast of Norfolk, and 28km east of Chapel St. Leonards off the coast of Lincolnshire.

Rampion is jointly owned by EON (50.1%), Enbridge (24.9%) and Green Investment Bank (25%). The wind farm is situated 13km off the south coast of England, near Sussex.

Located approximately 19km from shore in the Irish Sea, DONG Energy’s Walney Extension contains two phases. For the purposes of TR5, both phases will be treated as a single qualifying project and one licence will be awarded to an OFTO to operate the Walney Extension, Ofgem said.