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The government has awarded funding to National Grid and the developers of two offshore wind farms to explore the feasibility of coordinating their transmission connections with a new ‘bootstrap’ link in the North Sea.
The North Falls and Five Estuaries projects are both extensions to existing wind farms off the east coast of England – Greater Gabbard and Galloper respectively. The former is being developed by SSE Renewables and RWE, while the latter is being developed by RWE and consortium of partners led by Macquarie.
National Grid Electricity Transmission is planning to build a new 2GW high voltage direct current cable link between Kent and Suffolk. The 145km Sea Link would be predominantly offshore, running 130km along the seabed from Pegwell Bay in Kent to a landfall location between Aldeburgh and Thorpeness in Suffolk.
The company has been working with the developers of the two wind farms to explore the possibility of coordinating their transmission connections with Sea Link as part of the ‘Early Opportunities’ workstream of the government’s Offshore Transmission Network Review.
The partners have now been awarded £1.7 million of grant funding from the Department for Energy Security and Network Zero (DESNZ) through the Offshore Coordination Support Scheme to undertake further exploratory work. The consortium will produce a series of study and assessments on the feasibility of a coordinated connection, the economic, engineering and regulatory challenges this would present, and potential solutions. The first step will be a high-level feasibility study, which is expected to be published by the end of March 2024.
DESNZ said the consortium could potentially receive an additional £11.7 million of funding in 2024/25. If the coordinated design is taken forward by the developers, the department said it would be first connection of its kind in the UK.
In a joint statement, the developers said: “This support enables the projects to consider an alternative coordinated connection whilst, in parallel, continuing to progress existing radial proposals to ensure no delay in building the much-needed infrastructure to support the UK’s net zero targets (should the offshore coordination be determined as not deliverable).
“As beneficiaries of the grant, we will be required to share key learnings on how a coordinated offshore transmission approach could work.”
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