The site received planning consent in November last year for the project off the coast of Northumberland, northeast England.
The National Renewable Energy Centre (Narec) has taken the project through the consent stages.
The Crown Estate, which is responsible for the waters around the UK, is now asking for expressions of interest from developers to install and test prototype offshore turbines, to be operational by 2017. It will run an official tender process once the market's interest is known.
The development is made up of three separate arrays, each with a maximum capacity of 33.3MW and up to five turbines. Construction of the first array is expected to begin in 2015.
Narec had always planned to offer the project to the market. In November, its chief technology officer “uåX˜äŠÊ˜·³Ç TV: "The next phase is to establish a commercial consortium to develop the project.
"It's representative of Round 3 conditions, which is the best value of the project."
In April, Narec merged with the Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult (ORE Catapult) to form one UK development body.
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