The Crown Estate announces offshore wind energy test and demonstration sites | REVE News of the wind sector in Spain and in the world

Drawing on recommendations made by the Offshore Wind Cost Reduction Taskforce in June this year The Crown Estate is seeking opinion about how best to design and lease future offshore T&D facilities.

A large number of T&D initiatives have been formulated by industry as part of the cost reduction pathways study and these have been collated and characterised with the intention of identifying projects and sites that can produce tangible reductions in direct costs, improve performance or risk profile.

The UK is the world leader in terms of installed capacity of offshore wind, and with further projects under construction and coming to the consenting stage, looking ahead to 2020 and beyond the industry is ideally placed to foster innovation and a thriving supply chain, addressing the gap between supply and demand.

UK’s first major offshore windfarm, North Hoyle. General Electric is planning to invest €340m in Europe’s wind energy industry over the next 10 years.

Drawing on recommendations made by the Offshore Wind Cost Reduction Taskforce in June this year we are seeking opinion about how best to design and lease future offshore T&D facilities. A large number of T&D initiatives have been formulated by industry as part of the cost reduction pathways study and these have been collated and characterised with the intention of identifying projects and sites that can produce tangible reductions in direct costs, improve performance or risk profile.

The Crown Estate industry questionnaire invites offshore wind and new technology developers to share their understanding of the demand for, and the best ways to:

Secure additional value from existing testing and demonstration sites or operating wind farms
Develop new test and demonstration sites including as part of / extensions to existing project developments, that require minimal or no changes to existing consent conditions
Develop deep water (60m +) demonstration sites

Commenting on the announcement, Martin Simpson, Head of New Energy and Technology, said: “Our industry engagement will enable us to develop ways of better facilitating the leasing of offshore wind demonstration sites, and in doing so will help us to address the predicted gap between supply and demand. The UK is currently a world leader, but we need to innovate continually, driving improvements in technology, operational processes and contract structures – all of which will help to reduce costs and maintain the UK’s position.”

A document introducing the exercise and setting out the questions is available to download:

The Crown Estate test and demonstration industry questionnaire (PDF, 189 KB)

A six week period has been provided for responses to the questionnaire with a deadline of 12 noon on 5 October 2012. Following this, we will be reviewing the responses, and integrating the emerging themes into a set of recommendations on future demonstration site development, which will go to the Offshore Wind Programme Board by the end of the year.