Seabed landlord the Crown Estate has also subsequently issued an invitation to tender for pre-qualified bidders in its Celtic Sea floating wind leasing round, through which it aims to award acreage for 4.5GW of offshore wind capacity to connect directly into the UK's transmission network. The 4.5GW round is the UK's fifth offshore wind leasing round.
National Grid’s Beyond 2030: Celtic Sea plan – which includes three connections into south Wales and south-west England – is the first time a network design has been assessed prior to a tender in the UK, the ESO said.
The new approach to the sequencing will allow developers to make a more informed bid based on the network recommendations, reducing risk, the comapany claimed. It also allows the ESO to take a new approach on the connections queue for the capacity that will be awarded in the upcoming tender (round 5) “by effectively ring-fencing the 4.5GW in advance”. This means it can proceed efficiently with the connection contract process when the seabed agreements for lease are awarded by the Crown Estate.
ESO’s director of strategic energy planning and chief engineer, Julian Leslie, said: “Offshore wind is vital to achieving the government’s target for clean power by 2030, sustaining energy security and achieving net zero by 2050, so it is a really positive development that this is the first time an offshore wind leasing round will have been launched with a recommended high-level network design in place.”
The recommended design connects up to 3GW of floating offshore wind into two locations in south Wales and up to 1.5GW into south-west England, with each of the three proposed offshore wind farms (also known as project development areas, or PDAs) having its own connection to the onshore electricity network.
The proposals are for one high-voltage direct current (HVDC) connection into a potential new south Wales connection node, and two connections using high-voltage alternating current (HVAC) technology into Carmarthenshire, south Wales and North Devon, south-west England.
The ESO said a number of shortlisted designs had been “rigorously assessed” against four design objectives – impact on local communities and the environment, cost to the consumer, deliverability and operability – allowing it to arrive at a recommended design that carefully balances these considerations.
With no new overhead lines proposed to connect the offshore wind, the recommendation presents less impact on the environment and community than others that were considered during the design process, it said.
The proposal also makes good use of the current wider transmission infrastructure compared with other options, and – in the case of Carmarthenshire and North Devon – recommends regions with an already identified need for a substation, or an already-proposed substation (for example Llandyfaelog in Carmarthenshire), the ESO claimed.
This alignment with other infrastructure needs could lead to a more coordinated approach to locating new substations, it said.
National Grid's assessment was part of its 'holistic network design (HND) approach to chart a course to facilitate up to 86GW of offshore wind up to and throughout the 2030s.
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