RWE begins construction for Sofia offshore windfarm

RWE has commenced onshore construction for the Sofia offshore windfarm that will be located 195 kilometres from the North East coast at Dogger Bank in the North Sea.

It is starting with preparatory work for a new high-voltage direct current converter station near the village of Lazenby in Teesside that will be installed by GE Grid Solutions beginning in early 2022.

Work on the 7-kilometre onshore cable route, which will run from between Redcar and Marske-by-the-Sea to the new substation at Lazenby before connecting an existing National Grid substation at Lackenby, will also begin around the same time.

With a total capacity of 1.4GW and requiring £3 billion of investment, Sofia is the largest windfarm currently under construction by RWE.

The flagship project will feature 100 of Siemens Gamesa’s new 14MW turbine. The model was unveiled in May last year and will be the world’s largest and most powerful wind turbine, with 108-metre-long blades and a rotor diameter of 222 metres.

Sofia was originally developed by the Forewind consortium – comprising RWE, SSE, Statkraft and Equinor (then Statoil) – as one of a series of eight offshore wind projects on Dogger Bank that were expected to deliver 9GW of capacity. They were granted seabed rights by the Crown Estate in its third leasing round in 2010.

The consortium scrapped two of the projects in 2014 and another two in 2015 shortly after the secretary of state awarded a development consent order for the other four, each with capacity of 1.2GW. RWE’s share in the development was handed to its new subsidiary Innogy as part of its formation in 2016.

In March 2017, Statkraft decided to leave the Forewind consortium, selling its 25 per cent stake to SSE and Equinor. The following August, Innogy took full control of one of the projects and subsequently renamed it Sofia. It left SSE and Equinor to develop the other three Dogger Bank projects, with Eni buying a 20 per cent in the first two in December last year.

Innogy secured a strike price of £39.65/MWh (2012 prices) in the third competitive Contracts for Difference auction in September 2019 after receiving consent to increase the size of the project to 1.4GW earlier in the year.

The company’s renewable assets, including Sofia, were returned to RWE in July 2020 as part of a major asset swap deal that saw Innogy sold to Eon. RWE gave the final go-ahead to the project in March.

Sven Utermohlen, chief operating officer for global offshore wind at RWE Renewables, said: “Achieving this start-of-construction milestone for Sofia offshore windfarm is a great moment for the entire RWE Renewables team and a fantastic tribute to the 11 years’ had work and collaboration from everyone involved, including our suppliers and stakeholders.

“Building a project of this size and scale is a great opportunity to demonstrate our expertise for delivering cost effective, innovative offshore wind energy around the globe.

“By installing next generation wind turbines and the most advanced balance of plant technology so far offshore, we will also gain valuable insights to deploy on our new projects, especially our two new adjacent sites on Dogger Bank South which we were recently awarded by the Crown Estate.”