UK's energy regulator, Office of Gas and Electricity Markets (Ofgem), has opened the tender process for the first project in its sixth round of its offshore transmission owner (OFTO) regime.
"Ofgem is opening a tender for owning the electricity transmission link to the 1.2 gigawatt (GW) Hornsea 1 wind farm project off the coast of Lincolnshire and Yorkshire, set to be the world’s largest offshore wind farm once complete," the government regulator for gas and electricity markets in Great Britain said in a press release.
The energy regulator runs tenders to own and operate links to offshore wind farms which cuts the cost of connecting them onshore to the grid for consumers.
The link to the Hornsea 1 wind farm is one of three to be tendered in the latest round. The other tenders are for the ownership of links to the 588 MW Beatrice wind farm project off the coast of Scotland and the 714 MW East Anglia One wind farm project off the coast of East Anglia. 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 GBP2 billion of transmission assets being tendered. At least £700m in savings were achieved for consumers across the first three tender rounds.
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 GBP3 billion in links connecting 4.6GW of offshore wind farms.