Germany's RWE Innogy has signed up three new project partners for Galloper Wind Farm, enabling construction on the project to start offshore England next month.
The 366MW Galloper project is to be funded by the UK Green Investment Bank (GIB), Siemens Financial Services and Macquarie Capital. Each will become 25% partners alongside RWE Innogy.
A consortium of 12 banks has also provided a £1.37 billion debt facility.
Work is due to start next month and contracts have already been announced. Siemens has a contract to supply, install and commission 56 wind turbines for the project. Siemens is due to start installing the SWT-6.0-154 wind turbines in May 2017.
Boskalis' cable-laying joint venture with VolkerWessels, VBMS, has been awarded two contracts, one for the export cabling, consisting of the supply and installation of two 45km-long export cables, and the second to supply and install 56 inter-array cables. Installation of the first export cable is scheduled for 2016, followed by the installation of the second export cable and inter-array cables in 2017.
RenewableUK, the trade association representing the wind industry, says the announcement by RWE Innogy of new project partners and investors for the Galloper offshore wind farm off the coast of Suffolk demonstrates the robustness of Britain’s world-leading offshore wind market.
It follows the announcement on Wednesday that DONG Energy has made a final investment decision to build Walney Extension offshore wind farm off the coast of Cumbria.
The confirmation of the two projects, which have a combined capacity of nearly 1GW, means that the UK now has more than 10GW of offshore wind capacity either operational or under construction, or with financial support fully secured, said the body.
The Government’s advisory body, the Committee on Climate Change (CCC), is now recommending we install 1-2 gigawatts of offshore wind a year throughout the 2020s to meet the UK's carbon reduction goals. The CCC says offshore wind is set to become cheaper than gas during the next decade.
“However, if we’re to continue to deliver ambitious offshore infrastructure projects throughout the 2020s, we need a clear plan from Government stating how much offshore wind capacity it wants over the next decade. We’ve had some encouraging signals so far, but we need details of how the financial framework is going to work for offshore wind to deliver at scale, as a key part of the Government’s industrial strategy,” says RenewableUK’s Director of Policy for Economics and Regulation, Dr Gordon Edge.