Ofgem is opening a tender for owning the electricity transmission link to the 1.2GW Hornsea 1 wind farm project, owned by Ørsted, and sited 120km east of the coast of Lincolnshire and Yorkshire.

The link to  Hornsea 1  is one of three to be tendered in the sixth tender round. The other tenders are for links to

• The 588MW Beatrice wind farm owned by SSE Renewables (40%), Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (35%) and SDIC Power (25%), sited 13km off the coast of Caithness, Scotland
• The 714MW East Anglia One wind farm project, owned by ScottishPower Renewables (UK), and sited 48km off the coast of Suffolk.

 

The tenders will open at the end of October.  

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 £3 billion in links connecting 4.6GW of offshore wind farms.