Beefed Up Thor Comes with Offshore Grid Package

The scope of the tender to develop the Thor wind farm in the Danish North Sea will include the offshore grid connection, the Danish Energy Agency (DEA) said.

DEA has also revealed that Thor will have the minimal installed capacity of 800MW, with an option for the developer to boost the wind farm’s capacity to up to 1,000MW. To remind, the Danish parliament unanimously voted for a new energy agreement which includes building three new offshore wind projects by 2030 with a total capacity of at least 2.4GW. Thor is the first of those projects.

The Danish transmission system operator Energinet has previously been responsible for constructing Denmark’s offshore grid connections and has financed the cost through tariffs, DEA said.

This task will now be the responsibility of the tender winner as part of the scope of the project and will be financed through the Danish state budget.

Energinet will continue having the responsibility of constructing and operating the onshore grid connection from the onshore substation to the transmission grid, DEA said.

The winner of the tender will have to pay Energinet for the cost of constructing the onshore grid connection. This will, however, be subject to the approval from the European Commission.

Further information concerning the tender will be included in the prior information notice which is expected to be published in the middle of 2019.