Bidding has opened to own and operate the links connecting two offshore wind farms to the onshore network. The links to be tendered are for Galloper off the east coast of England and Walney Extension in the Irish Sea.

Ofgem, which runs the tender process, will choose the most competitive bids from companies to own and run links to the offshore sites over a 20-year period.

Companies have eight weeks to enter submissions for the Galloper and Walney Extension links. Ofgem will publish bidder shortlists for each project in the summer.

The tender is  the second stage of the fifth tender round (TR5) for offshore transmission owners (Oftoss). TR5 will see connections to over 2.3GW of generation change hands with  an estimated value of £2 billion.

The shortlisted bidders for Rampion, Dudgeon and Race Banke were recently published.

Further reading:

Six companies to tender for three offshore links

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