Two Scottish renewable energy projects have been awarded 15-year contracts after a UK government auction. The Moray East Offshore wind farm is planned for the Moray Firth and a biomass heat and power plant will be built in Grangemouth. Contracts are awarded after an auction for subsidies in which the lowest bidder wins. Scottish Renewables said the wind farm bid showed there had been a “dramatic” drop in the cost of the technology. The joint project by EDP Renovaveis and the Engie consortium is scheduled to start generating power in 2022/23.
BBC 11th Sept 2017 read more »
Renewable energy companies said on Monday that bigger turbines, each several times more powerful than their predecessors from older wind farms, are responsible for a dramatic drop in their costs. On Monday, the cost of subsidies from the government to the offshore wind industry fell as low as £57.50 per megawatt hour, more than 50 per cent lower than the average £117.14/MWh awarded in the last comparable bidding round just two years ago. Off the coast of Liverpool, the wind turbines that began turning in May as part of Dong Energy’s Burbo Bank Extension scheme each stand 195m tall and are capable of generating 8MW of electricity. Just one of these turbines generates more electricity than the whole of the world’s first offshore wind farm, Vindeby in Denmark, which was decommissioned earlier this year after 25 years of operation. And the turbines continue to grow, both in height and power. For the Hornsea Project Two off the coast of Yorkshire, which won subsidies on Monday, Dong is projecting turbines that could be as powerful as 15MW.
FT 11th Sept 2017 read more »
A massive offshore wind farm is set to be built off Scotland’s east coast after winning a UK government tendering competition to supply power. Known as Moray East, it will be sited between Fraserburgh and Wick in the Moray Firth, When completed in the next five years, the 950MW scheme will be Scotland’s biggest offshore wind farm – overtaking the 588MW Beatrice field being constructed nearby. With around 100 204m-tall turbines, Moray East will generate enough electricity for around one million homes. The development, a joint venture between Spanish renewables giant EDPR and French utility firm Engie, is the only Scottish wind project to have been awarded a 15-year Contract for Difference (CfD) from Westminster’s Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy in the current round of licensing. The new agreement, with a strike price of £57.50 per megawatt hour, represents a significant drop in the cost of offshore wind generation. The latest price is nearly two thirds less than in 2015 and dramatically cheaper than the £92.50 per megawatt hour deal with the new Hinkley C nuclear power station.
Scotsman 12th Sept 2017 read more »
The UK’s offshore wind sector could power a £17.5bn investment inthe UK economy over the next four years after faster than expected cost-cutting slashed subsidies for the technology by half. The Government’s latest auction for support contracts, released on Monday, shows that offshore wind costs have halved in recent years to under £58 for every megawatt-hour of electricity produced, even lower than the estimates given by experts in the run-up to the results. The lower costs mean more wind farms will be able to apply for the £294m funding pot, bringing an investment surge of £17.5bn into the UK. The boom is even greater than the £11bn predicted by Renewable UK as recently as last week. EDF Energy defended its plans to build the Hinkley Point C new nuclear power plant at a cost of £92.50/MWh to consumers, saying ahead of the auction result that its next project is likely to show falling costs too. Its Sizewell C plant is expecting guaranteed revenue of £89.50/MWh, which is more expensive than offshore wind, even when the intermittency of wind is taken into account. Meanwhile, Scottish Power Renewables – the developer arm of the Big Six supplier – dropped out of the running in August before the auction began, saying its East Anglia 2 project off the Suffolk coast would not be ready in time. Other companies which missed out on contracts in this auction round include marine power developer Atlantis Resources. Its Meygen marine power project in Scotland failed to keep pace with plummeting offshore wind costs in the hard -fought auction. Tim Cornelius, chief executive officer of Atlantis, said: “We’ve made great strides in reducing our cost of generation so that we can slash our requirement for revenue support, and I am incredibly proud of the work the Atlantis team has done in this respect. “However, I must acknowledge the difficulties of competing on a level playing field with established technologies like offshore wind, which has been operating at commercial scale in the UK for over a decade.”
Telegraph 11th Sept 2017 read more »
Only a few years ago sceptics scoffed at claims that offshore wind power could be generated for a third less within a decade; this week the industry cut its costs by half in less than three years. This will mean cheaper energy bills for British households. But it could also establish the UK as a world leader in the green technology, as turbines are built along the coast. Yet the Great British offshore wind boom is still notable for the absence of any large, UK-based players. The big winners in the Government’s latest auction were Denmark’s Dong Energy and Statkraft, Portugal’s EDP Renewables and French energy company Engie.
Telegraph 11th Sept 2017 read more »
More monster wind farms are set to loom over Britain’s coast but power will cost 40% less than Hinkley
Daily Mail 12th Sept 2017 read more »
