New Offshore Wind Capacity in the Making
We covered several auction and project planning updates on offshoreWIND.biz this week – signifying progress on adding further offshore wind capacity worldwide – while news on projects under construction continue arriving as the offshore construction season is now well underway.
Norway’s Deep Wind Offshore has been named the winner of an auction for the development of an offshore wind farm in the Saare 2.1 area in Estonia.
The only bid was submitted by Deep Wind Offshore which offered EUR 2,457,000, the starting price of the auction, according to Estonia’s Consumer Protection and Technical Regulation Authority (CPTRA).
The other two companies that participated in the auction were Estonia Offshore Wind DevCo (Ignitis Group) and Utilitas Wind.
Germany’s Federal Network Agency has awarded 2.5 GW of offshore wind across two areas in its latest auction that saw two bidders offering to pay EUR 3 billion in total for the opportunity to develop new offshore wind farms in the North Sea.
A project company called?Offshore Wind One GmbH, owned by TotalEnergies, secured rights for the 1.5 GW site N-11.2 with a bid of approximately EUR 1.96 billion and EnBW secured the 1 GW area N-12.3 at a price of EUR 1.065 billion.
The US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) has issued a draft Environmental Assessment (EA) of the Wind Energy Area (WEA) in the Gulf of Maine. The WEA spans the federal waters off Maine, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire and includes eight potential leasing areas that could house 15 GW of installed offshore wind capacity.
The draft EA is related to the potential impacts of offshore wind energy leasing in the Gulf of Maine and considers the potential environmental impacts associated with activities such as surveys and installation of meteorological buoys.
Environmental reviews for any potential offshore wind projects in the WEA would be performed separately if a lease sale is held and before approving any proposed offshore wind project.
The US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) has approved Sunrise Wind’s construction and operations plan (COP), marking the final approval needed for the federal agency to move the 942 MW offshore wind project toward the start of offshore construction.
Sunrise Wind, New York’s largest offshore wind project, is located approximately 30 miles (about 48 kilometres) east of Montauk, New Jersey, and will produce enough electricity to power nearly 600,000 New York homes.
The project team will now accelerate work on the onshore transmission system, with offshore construction ramping up later this year, said ?rsted.
The Sunrise Wind offshore wind farm is expected to be operational in 2026.
The German Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency (BSH) has issued the planning approvals for Nordseecluster A, the first phase of RWE’s Nordseecluster offshore wind project.
The Nordseecluster offshore wind project is being built some 46 kilometres north of the German island of Borkum and approximately 50 kilometres north of the German island of Juist.
The first phase, which has now been approved, has a total capacity of 600 MW and consists of NC 1 and NC 2 sites.
The second phase, Nordseecluster B, will add a further 900 MW of capacity, with commercial operation expected to begin in early 2029.
Iberdrola has taken the final investment decision (FID) for its Windanker offshore wind farm in Germany, which has now advanced to the delivery phase.
Windanker is the third offshore wind project for Iberdrola in the German Baltic Sea. The company already operates the 350 MW Wikinger and is developing the 467 MW Baltic Eagle project.
Together, these offshore wind farms are part of Iberdrola’s Baltic Hub, scheduled to operate an installed capacity of over 1.1 GW by 2026.
Iberdrola says that all supply chain contracts for major components are signed for the 315 MW Windanker offshore wind farm and the manufacturing work is planned to start next month.
Skyborn Renewables has started site investigations in Finland, at a location where the company plans to build the 2.5 GW Pooki offshore wind farm, an extension of the former Suurhiekka project which was also being developed by Skyborn (wpd at the time).
The work started with bird and subsea acoustic surveys at the project site in Bothnian Bay, 25 kilometres offshore, in waters off Oulu, Ii, Simo and Kemi.
The surveys will be carried out during both 2024 and 2025 and the data collected will be analysed against data from the previous studies in the area and used to support the future environmental impact assessment (EIA) for the project.
SSE and Equinor, co-owners/developers of the Dogger Bank D offshore wind project, have submitted a Scoping Report for the 2 GW project to the UK’s Planning Inspectorate.
The report is filed in preparation for carrying out an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) that is required for submitting a Development Consent Order (DCO) application.
Dogger Bank D is the proposed fourth phase of what is already the world’s biggest offshore wind farm under construction which SSE and Equinor are building off Yorkshire in a consortium with V?rgr?nn.
If the fourth phase is approved and built, it would add up to 2 GW of installed capacity to the 3.6 GW Dogger Bank Wind Farm, whose third phase went into construction this year.
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