Last updated at 16:21, Tuesday, 31 July 2012

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A MULTI-MILLION pound deal to transfer ownership of a 42km cable, linking an offshore windfarm to the National Grid, is now complete.

Vattenfall closed the deal earlier this month on the transfer of transmission assets for the Ormonde Offshore Windfarm, 10km off Barrow, to Transmission Capital Partners.

The £103.9m deal transfers the 42km export cable and substations from the windfarm, under a process known as offshore transmission owner, following assessment by regulator Ofgem.

The export cable, made of copper and heavily armoured with steel wires and polyethylene to protect the copper, weighs 3,500 tons – equivalent to eight fully loaded jumbo jets.

The protected copper will transmit electricity from the 30-turbine windfarm to the mainland to meet the equivalent electricity demand of more than 100,000 homes annually.

Transmission Capital Partners, funded by International Public Partnerships, will now own and operate the subsea export cable taking power from the 150 megawatt windfarm and feed it into the National Grid.

TCP will also own and operate the windfarm’s onshore and offshore substations.

The licence granted to TCP by Ofgem allows it to operate the transmission cable and the substations for 20 years.

The Ormonde OFTO transfer is Vattenfall’s first in the UK.

The transfer of transmission assets at its Thanet Offshore Windfarm is expected to follow later this year.

Vattenfall has invested close to £1.5bn in UK offshore wind construction since 2008 and now owns and operates three offshore windfarms in UK waters. These schemes form the foundation of a major, long term, UK wind energy business both on and offshore.

Peter Wesslau said: “This OFTO transaction is Vattenfall’s first to be completed in the UK and we are pleased to have reached this with TCP.

“Ormonde Offshore Windfarm is a cutting edge scheme which provides a glimpse into the future of offshore wind.

“Vattenfall completed the installation of the export cable in April last year and we believe that we were the first in the UK to simultaneously lay and bury a cable of that length and size in one uninterrupted operation.”

This is the fifth offshore transmission project that has closed under Ofgem’s initial round of nine tenders.

The Ormonde windfarm is expected to produce around 500 gigawatt hours of electricity every year.

First power was exported to the National Grid on August 18, 2011, and all turbines were ready to produce at full power from February 22 this year.

Meanwhile with Renewables UK trumpeting the potential of windfarms to create jobs in Britain, Vestas announcing it has abandoned plans to build a wind turbine factory in Britain, it’s an opportune time to look at where the work is.

The next project off the Cumbrian shore is likely to be Dong and Scottish Power Renewables’ West of Duddon Sands project with a value of £1.6bn. Where will its main equipment and services originate?

Germany to start with – Siemens has the £500m contract to deliver and maintain 108, 3.6MW turbines. Its Danish factory will deliver them.

Denmark’s A2 Seas will install the turbines and Bladt Industries (part of a large Dong Energy-Bladt Industries framework contract) supply foundations. The steel plate comes from Germany.

Transport from Aalborg and installation will be undertaken by Boskalis, SMIT Marine and Volker Construction (a £115m contract).

Around 122km of power cables by Nexus (Germany – where its factories employ 7,000 people) will be delivered under a framework contract with Dong at a cost of around £100m. Cables will be installed by VSMC (Visser and Smit Marine) – cost £150m, benefiting the Netherlands.

France’s Fabricom Suez delivers the substation design. Lemants NV (Holland) part of the Smulder Group builds it, the transformer comes from CS Holdings and Geo-Sea (both Belgium) will install it.

Turbine base scour protection will be delivered by Royal Boskalis Westminster NV (Holland).

British content from British firms includes:

l The planned multi-million pound onshore support base at Barrow – expected to be built by a Cumbrian or Lancashire firm;

l Some of the Siemens contract which generates support work and jobs at the existing Siemens base in Barrow;

l Geophysical, bird survey, navigation work.

Looking at wind projects in the round, it is the onshore support bases, their personnel, shipping and scour protection stone needs that offer the best of the opportunities for Cumbria. Europe dominates when it comes to design and manufacture.

The Department for Trade and Industry in January 2004 said: “The main threats to the UK are... the growing UK wind market being served by non-UK wind turbine suppliers that have local sales offices only in the UK, utilising their own manufacturing facilities overseas.”

It is in this context that Furness Enterprise is engaging with Glasgow-based Scottish Power Renewables to seek to maximise local potential for job creation and supply chain growth associated with West of Duddon. Its view is that Renewables UK needs to be exert more influence on the government to source production in UK.

Stuart Klosinski, Furness Enterprise’s industrial development manager, said: “We continue to maximise post construction benefits of windfarms by influencing operators such as Dong Energy, Scottish Power to use local resources and develop the supply chain capacity of firms in Cumbria and Furness.”

Figures obtained from Cumbria County Council show that as of December 2011, Cumbria had 177 onshore and 296 offshore wind turbines in operation or with planning permission approved. And more could be yet to come.

Three of the biggest global energy giants – Dong Energy, Centrica and Vattenfall, are already established leaders in the production of green energy through windfarms, and Cumbria is very much at the heart of their future plans.

Dong is preparing to consult with the public ahead of planned extensions to the Walney Offshore Windfarms.

The Walney 1 and Walney 2 windfarms each feature 51 turbines with a total capacity of 367.2 megawatts (MW) and Dong said it intends to consult further with residents in South and West Cumbria from September, following a series of drop-in events last year.

Dong Energy’s communication manager Peter Sills gave a presentation to Cumbria County Council’s local committee for Barrow, detailing the plans for the Danish energy giant’s proposed third windfarm for the area.

Mr Sills said the company is reviewing an area in the Irish Sea, which is similar to the size of the Isle of Man, to review where more turbines could be placed.

Three options for the expansion are being examined – building 209, 145m-high turbines, or 91 larger, 195m turbines, or a mixture of 91 of the larger and 40 of the smaller turbines.

The first stage of the consultation was carried out last year and Dong is to begin consulting residents in September.

Mr Sills said around 60 per cent of people who were consulted at the first stage said they were in favour of the windfarm.

He said the area would benefit financially during the two-year construction phase and between 60 and 100 potential jobs would be created.

Many of the 60 staff who work at the windfarm are from the local area, he said.

The new development will double the area of Dong’s existing windfarm by installing 108 turbines, around 19km off the coast of Walney. The extension will generate enough electricity to provide power for 657,000 homes.

Workshops, surveys and geological tests have been carried out and Dong’s chief executive, Anders Eldrup, revealed Britain’s Energy Coast would continue to play a big part in the company’s renewable energy plans.

He said: “This area will be a hub in the future... Cumbria will play a big part in our offshore developments. We have been granted an extension to our Walney windfarm which is quite a significant extra acreage and we are looking into all the development issues now.

“In the future this area will become a very significant one for Dong Energy because we have Walney, Barrow, the extensions to those windfarms, West of Duddon Sands and further south, the Burbo windfarms.” Following public consultation, Dong is expected to make an application in 2013 to the planning inspectorate, with the size of the turbines yet to be decided.

Onshore construction is already under way on Dong’s West of Duddon Sands windfarm, and the company expects to recruit a number of local workers to be involved in the building and maintenance of the development. Construction of the windfarm itself is expected to begin early next year.

In 2010, Centrica Energy was granted the exclusive licence to a 858m² zone between North Wales and Cumbria, giving the energy company the potential to develop up to an additional 4.2 gigawatts (4,200 megawatts) of renewable energy.

The number of turbines will depend on how powerful each turbine is but in theory could total up to 1,000. The zone, 25 miles out to sea from Barrow, has the potential to generate 4GW of power – enough to supply more than three million homes.

Centrica’s zone spans an area running from Anglesey, over 20km to the Isle of Man and over 40km to the Cumbrian coast. Factors will be taken into account when deciding where to build each windfarm, including water depth, shipping, fishing, oil and gas activity and connection to the National Grid.

Now, two years after being granted the licence, Centrica is doing tests to identify sites to construct windfarms within the zone and Dong has acquired a 50 per cent share in Centrica’s second Round 3 zone.

The deal will see Dong pay Centrica up to £40m in cash and a further £15m at closing of the transaction.

First published at 16:29, Wednesday, 25 July 2012
Published by http://www.in-cumbria.com