The Crown Estate has announced plans to award the rights for a third floating offshore wind site in the Celtic Sea to Ocean Winds, a 50-50 joint venture between EDPR and ENGIE.
The news follows the Offshore Wind Leasing Round 5 auction in June, which resulted in rights being awarded for two of three sites for new floating wind farms to Equinor and Gwynt Glas. Both entered into agreements for lease for their projects in October.
Following the auction, The Crown Estate stated it would ensure the delivery of the full potential capacity of up to 4.5GW available through Round 5 through deployment of a third site. It says that since then, it has been actively engaging the market to secure a developer for the third site. Ocean Winds was successful following a direct award process in accordance with the Procurement Act 2023.
It said Ocean Winds delivered the world’s first semi-submersible floating wind farm, WindFloat Atlantic, in Portugal in 2020, and has a proven track record of delivery in the UK including Moray East and Moray West.
In Round 5 The Crown Estate took steps to derisk the opportunity, including agreeing a plan with the National Energy System Operator for connecting the sites to the UK’s energy grid and undertaking technical and environmental pre-consent surveys.