Inside Offshore Wind - E.ON to invest €1.9 bln in U.K. offshore wind farm

Situated 13 kilometers off the Sussex coast at its nearest point, the project is comprised of 116 3.45 megawatt wind turbines, associated foundations, an offshore substation and cabling. It will have the capacity to generate 400 megawatts of electricity and is expected to generate 1,300 gigawatt hours of renewable energy annually, enough to supply the equivalent of up to 300,000 homes and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by up to 600,000 metric tons a year, E.ON said.

E.ON will provide construction, operations and maintenance as well as energy management services to the project. This includes the delivery of the connection to the National Grid with marine export cables to shore, approximately 26 kilometers of onshore cables and onshore grid substation assets. E.ON will divest these offshore transmission assets under a regulated sales process.

U.K.’s Green Investment Bank PLC, or GIB, a leading investor in the U.K.’s offshore wind industry, has acquired a EUR327 million stake in the project, E.ON said.

Rampion Offshore wind farm at a glance:

• Offshore location – 13km to 23km off the Sussex coast.

• Site area – up to approximately 139km2

• Water depth – 19m to 50m.

• Installed electrical capacity – up to 700MW.

• Turbine size – each turbine will have a generating capacity of between 3MW and 7MW with a respective maximum height to tip of 180m and 210m.

• Turbine numbers – 100 to 175 turbines, depending on the turbine size selected. For larger turbines, the number of turbines needed to generate the maximum output of 700MW would vary, e.g. 140 x 5MW or 116 x 6MW turbines.

• Onshore works – a 26.4km underground cable route from landfall (where the electricity cable comes ashore) to the 400 kilovolts (kV) substation (owned by National Grid), around 2km south-west of Bolney village.

• Power output – based on our current expectations of the area’s wind resource over the long-term, we estimate the site could generate more than 2,100 gigawatt hours (GWh) of electricity each year.* This is enough to power the equivalent of around 450,000 homes† , more than two-thirds of the homes in Sussex,# including the city of Brighton and Hove.

• * Based on wind speed data from our existing offshore wind farms in UK waters. This will be updated as Rampion site specific data is gathered from the met mast.
• † Based on an average annual domestic household electricity consumption of 4,700kWh (DECC).
• # Office of National Statistics census data

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