Ofgem Tenders Major Offshore Transmission Links

UK energy market regulator Ofgem is opening a tender for owning the electricity transmission links to three offshore wind farms: the 1.2GW Hornsea Project One, the 714ME East Anglia One, and the 588MW Beatrice.

The tenders will open at the end of October.

This is the sixth tender round Ofgem has conducted under the offshore transmission owner regime, with a total of GBP 2 billion of transmission assets being tendered. At least GBP 700 million in savings were achieved for consumers across the first three tender rounds, Ofgem said.

Jonathan Brearley, executive director for systems and networks at Ofgem, said: “Tendering ownership of links to offshore wind farms has already proven to be a successful way of connecting cleaner electricity generation to the networks at a lower cost for consumers. It is also a boost for competition as it attracts new players into the energy market. Over the next decade we plan to open up high value onshore grid upgrades to competition so that we continue to drive down network costs for consumers.”

Since Ofgem and Government launched the regime in 2009 winning bidders have so far invested GBP 3 billion in links connecting 4.6GW of offshore wind farms.