The Anonymous Widower

An Update To Will We Run Out Of Power This Winter?

My Methods

Project Timescales For Wind Farms

In How Long Does It Take To Build An Offshore Wind Farm?, I came to these conclusions.

• It will take six years or less from planning consent to commissioning.
• It will take two years or less from the start of construction to commissioning.

I shall use these timescales, as any accelerations by the government, will only reduce them.

Dates

If a date is something like 2024/25, I will use the latest date. i.e. 2025 in this example.

The Update

In Will We Run Out Of Power This Winter?, which I wrote in July this year, I did a calculation of how much renewable energy would come on stream in the next few years.

I summarised the amount of new renewable energy coming on stream like this.

• 2022 – 3200 MW
• 2023 – 1500 MW
• 3024 – 2400 MW
• 2025 – 6576 MW
• 2026 – 1705 MW
• 2027 – 7061 GW

This totals to 22442 MW.

But I had made two omissions.

• Hornsea 3 wind farm will add 2582 MW in 2026/27.
• Hinckley Point C nuclear power station will add 3260 MW in 2027.

Ørsted have also brought forward the completion date of the Sofia wind farm to 2023, which moves 1400 GW from 2024 to 2023.

The new renewables summary figures have now changed to.

• 2022 – 3200 MW
• 2023 – 2925 MW
• 3024 – 1326 MW
• 2025 – 6576 MW
• 2026 – 1705 MW
• 2027 – 13173 MW

This totals to 28554 MW.

Note.

1. The early delivery of the Sofia wind farm has increased the amount of wind farms coming onstream next year, which will help the Winter of 2023/2024.
2. It will also help the Liz Truss/Kwasi Kwarteng government at the next election, that should take place in early 2025.
3. Hornsea 3 and Hinckley Point C make 2027 a big year for new renewable energy commissioning.

By 2027, we have more than doubled our renewable energy generation.

The Growth Plan 2022

In this document from the Treasury, the following groups of wind farms are listed for acceleration.

• Remaining Round 3 Projects
• Round 4 Projects
• Extension Projects
• Scotwind Projects
• INTOG Projects
• Floating Wind Commercialisation Projects
• Celtic Sea Projects

I will look at each in turn.

Remaining Round 3 Projects

In this group are the the 1200 MW Dogger Bank B and Dogger Bank C wind farms, which are due for commissioning in 2024/25.

Suppose that as with the Sofia wind farm in the same area, they were to be able to be brought forward by a year.

The new renewables summary figures would change to.

• 2022 – 3200 MW
• 2023 – 2925 MW
• 3024 – 3726 MW
• 2025 – 5076 MW
• 2026 – 1705 MW
• 2027 – 13173 MW

This totals to 28554 MW.

It looks like if Dogger Bank B and Dogger Bank C can be accelerated by a year, it has four effects.

• The renewables come onstream at a more constant rate.
• SSE and Equinor, who are developing the Dogger Bank wind farms start to get paid earlier.
• The UK gets more electricity earlier, which helps bridge the gap until Hornsea 3 and Hinckley Point C come onstream in 2027.
• The UK Government gets taxes and lease fees from the Dogger Bank wind farms at an earlier date.

Accelerating the remaining Round 3 projects would appear to be a good idea.

Round 4 Projects

According to Wikipedia’s list of proposed wind farms, there are six Round 4 wind farms, which total up to 7026 MW.

Accelerating these projects, is probably a matter of improved government regulations and pressure, and good project management.

But all time savings in delivering the wind farms benefits everybody all round.

This document from the Department of Business, Industry and Industrial Strategy lists all the Contracts for Difference Allocation Round 4 results for the supply of zero-carbon electricity.

Many of these projects are smaller projects and I suspect quite a few are shovel ready.

But as with the big wind farms, there are some projects that can be brought forward to everybody’s benefit.

Norfolk Boreas

Norfolk Boreas wind farm is one of the Round 4 projects.

The wind farm is shown as 1400 MW on Wikipedia.

On the web site, it now says construction will start in 2023, which could mean a completion by 2025, as these projects seem to take about two years from first construction to commissioning, as I showed in How Long Does It Take To Build An Offshore Wind Farm?.

The new renewables summary figures would change to.

• 2022 – 3200 MW
• 2023 – 2925 MW
• 3024 – 3726 MW
• 2025 – 6476 MW
• 2026 – 1705 MW
• 2027 – 11773 MW

This still totals to 28554 MW.

This acceleration of a large field would be beneficial, as the 2025 figure has increased substantially.

I would suspect that Vattenfall are looking hard to accelerate their Norfolk projects.

Extension Projects

I first talked about extension projects in Offshore Wind Extension Projects 2017.

The target was to add 2.85 GW of offshore wind and in the end seven projects were authorised.

• Sheringham Shoal offshore wind farm – 719 MW with Dudgeon
• Dudgeon offshore wind farm – 719 MW with Sheringham Shoal
• Greater Gabbard offshore wind farm
• Galloper offshore wind farm
• Rampion offshore wind farm – 1200 MW
• Gwynt y Môr offshore wind farm – 1100 MW
• Thanet offshore wind farm – 340 MW

These are the best figures I have and they add up to an interim total of 3359 MW.

I suspect that these projects could be easy to accelerate, as the developers have probably been designing these extensions since 2017.

I think it is reasonable to assume that these seven wind farms will add at least 3000 MW, that can be commissioned by 2027.

The new renewables summary figures would change to.

• 2022 – 3200 MW
• 2023 – 2925 MW
• 3024 – 3726 MW
• 2025 – 6476 MW
• 2026 – 1705 MW
• 2027 – 14773 MW

This now totals to 31554 MW.

Accelerating the extension projects would be a good idea, especially, as they were awarded some years ago, so are probably well into the design phase.

ScotWind Projects

I first talked about ScotWind in ScotWind Offshore Wind Leasing Delivers Major Boost To Scotland’s Net Zero Aspirations.

It was planned to do the following.

• Generate 9.7 GW from six wind farms with fixed foundations.
• Generate 14.6 GW from ten floating wind farms.

But since then three more floating wind farms with a total capacity of 2800 MW have been added, as I wrote about in Three Shetland ScotWind Projects Announced.

I suspect that some of these projects are ripe for acceleration and some may well be generating useful electricity by 2030 or even earlier.

INTOG Projects

I wrote about INTOG in What Is INTOG?.

I can see the INTOG Projects contributing significantly to our fleet of offshore wind turbines.

I have already found a 6 GW/£30 billion project to decarbonise oil and gas rigs around our shores, which is proposed by Cerulean Winds and described on this web page.

If the other large INTOG projects are as good as this one, then we’ll be seeing some sensational engineering.

Floating Wind Commercialisation Projects

This page on the Carbon Trust website is entitled Floating Wind Joint Industry Programme (JIP).

They appear to be very much involved in projects like these.

The page has this description.

The Floating Wind Joint Industry Programme is a world leading collaborative research and development (R&D) initiative dedicated to overcoming technological challenges and advancing commercialisation of floating offshore wind.

This graphic shows the partners and advisors.

Most of the big wind farm builders and turbine and electrical gubbins manufacturers are represented.

Celtic Sea Projects

The Celtic Sea lies between South-East Ireland, Pembrokeshire and the Devon and Cornwall peninsular.

The Crown Estate kicked this off with press release in July 2022, that I wrote about in The Crown Estate Announces Areas Of Search To Support Growth Of Floating Wind In The Celtic Sea.

This map shows the five areas of search.

One Celtic Sea project has already been awarded a Contract for Difference in the Round 4 allocation, which I wrote about in Hexicon Wins UK’s First Ever CfD Auction For Floating Offshore Wind.

Other wind farms have already been proposed for the Celtic Sea.

In DP Energy And Offshore Wind Farms In Ireland, I said this.

They are also developing the Gwynt Glas offshore wind farm in the UK sector of the Celtic Sea.

• In January 2022, EDF Renewables and DP Energy announced a Joint Venture partnership to combine their knowledge and
  expertise, in order to participate in the leasing round to secure seabed rights to develop up to 1GW of FLOW in the Celtic Sea.
• The wind farm is located between Pembroke and Cornwall.

The addition of Gwynt Glas will increase the total of floating offshore wind in the UK section of the Celtic Sea.

• Blue Gem Wind – Erebus – 100 MW Demonstration project  – 27 miles offshore
• Blue Gem Wind – Valorus – 300 MW Early-Commercial project – 31 miles offshore
• Falck Renewables and BlueFloat Energy – Petroc – 300 MW project – 37 miles offshore
• Falck Renewables and BlueFloat Energy – Llywelyn – 300 MW project – 40 miles offshore
• Llŷr Wind – 100 MW Project – 25 miles offshore
• Llŷr Wind – 100 MW Project – 25 miles offshore
• Gwynt Glas – 1000 MW Project – 50 miles offshore

This makes a total of 2.2 GW, with investors from several countries.

It does seem that the Celtic Sea is becoming the next area of offshore wind around the British Isles to be developed.

How do these wind farms fit in with the Crown Estate’s plans for the Celtic Sea?

I certainly, don’t think that the Crown Estate will be short of worthwhile proposals.

Conclusion

More and more wind farms keep rolling in.

September 29, 2022 - Posted by AnonW | Energy | Cerulean Winds, Contracts for Difference Allocation Round 4, Dogger Bank, Dogger Bank Wind Farms, Equinor, Floating Wind Power, Hornsea Wind Farm, INTOG, Kwasi Kwarteng, Liz Truss, Norfolk Boreas Wind Farm, Offshore Wind Power, Politics, Project Management, ScotWind Leasing, SSE, Vattenfall, Wind Power