UK 3rd Offshore Wind Round

32.2 GW of potential new capacity has been identified under the Crown Estate's programme. From the Crown Estate website:

The developers who have signed exclusivity zone agreements are:

1. Moray Firth zone, Moray Offshore Renewables Ltd which is 75% owned by EDP Renovaveis and 25% owned by SeaEnergy Renewables – 1.3 GW

2. Firth of Forth zone, SeaGreen Wind Energy Ltd equally owned by SSE Renewables and Fluor – 3.5 GW

3. Dogger Bank zone, the Forewind Consortium equally owned by each of SSE Renewables, RWE Npower Renewables, Statoil and Statkraft – 9 GW

4. Hornsea zone, Siemens Project Ventures and Mainstream Renewable Power, a consortium equally owned by Mainstream Renewable Power and Siemens Project Ventures and involving Hochtief Construction – 4 GW

5. Norfolk Bank zone, East Anglia Offshore Wind Ltd equally owned by Scottish Power Renewables and Vattenfall Vindkraft – 7.2 GW

6. Hastings zone, Eon Climate and Renewables UK – 0.6 GW

7. West of Isle of Wight zone, Eneco New Energy – 0.9 GW

8. Bristol Channel zone, RWE Npower Renewables, the UK subsidiary of RWE Innogy – 1.5 GW

9. Irish Sea zone, Centrica Renewable Energy and involving RES Group – 4.2 GW


The clear winners, as shown in the graph above, are the big 6 utilities (except for Eon and especially EdF who are complete absent), plus Vattenfall, which is increasingly becoming a member of the big 6.

42 bids!

The Crown Estate has announced that it has received 42 bids from 20 organisations for Pentland Firth leases.  Apparently lease applications for sites from 10 MW to 300 MW have been received, across a range of technologies and technology types (wave and tidal), and from small developers all the way up to large multi-national energy companies (I wonder if they mean oil companies, utilities or both?)

It seems to us that there is some risk here that bidders may be tempted to "land-bank", tying up sites without serious near-term development plans.  I hope the Crown Estate is sensible enough to try to make sure that only really credible companies are awarded leases in the most energetic areas.  We worry that putting today's devices into the Pentland Firth is like racing a Model T Ford around Brands Hatch - pushing early stage technology too far.

So while we're pleased at the level of interest, we hope that lessees are conservative in rolling out their technologies to less energetic sites first.

Thirty Eight!

The Crown Estate has just announced that 38 companies and consortia have been invited to tender for leases in the Pentland Firth lease round.

Obviously there's no public information on who the 38 are, but it would be interesting to know.