Expanded offshore wind farms to power 1.4 million extra homes

The agency that controls the UK sea bed, the Crown Estate, today announced that it has agreed to extend the first and second wave of offshore wind farms to provide more than 2GW of additional capacity, enough to power 1.4 million extra homes.

The organisation said it has authorised the extension of five existing offshore wind farms that combined could provide an additional 1.7GW of capacity, and had also approved the expansion of two other planned projects in order to provide an extra 340MW of capacity.

The Crown Estate said that formal agreements with the three developers who run the existing wind farms - Vattenfall, Dong Energy and a coalition containing SSE Renewable and RWE Npower Renewable - are expected in the coming weeks.

The developers will then seek planning permission for the expanded wind farms at Greater Gabbard, Kentish Flats, Thanet, Burbo Bank and Walney, and start work on an environmental impact assessment.

If planning permission is obtained construction work is expected to begin from 2014, providing a further boost to the UK wind turbine industry ahead of the next wave of large scale Round 3 projects, work on which is expected to begin from 2015.

Rob Hastings, The Crown Estate's director of the marine estate, said in a statement that the expanded projects highlighted the growing confidence among offshore wind developers.

"This 2GW has been driven by developers' appetite and will increase the total potential 2020 installed capacity to 48 GW," he said. "It is another positive step in the maturing of the offshore wind industry and will significantly support the growth of the supply chain as it adds further to the pipeline of construction projects."

His comments were echoed by Maria McCaffery, chief executive of trade association RenewableUK, who hailed the announcement as "definitive and positive evidence of the environmental and commercial viability of existing offshore projects".

"The site extensions come as a direct consequence of the UK’s world beating offshore wind farms showing that, after a successful start, they have further potential for growth," she said. "It is clear that developers are confident projects will continue to deliver and we welcome The Crown Estate's timely action in ensuring that this happens."