Three take £700m deal to link wind farms to grid

Balfour Beatty Capital, Macquarie Capital Group and Transmission Capital Partners have been named as preferred bidders by energy regulator Ofgem to own and operate the first £700m worth of transmission links to seven offshore wind farms.

This is part of a joint Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) and Ofgem scheme to encourage investment in high voltage transmission links for the potential 50GW of new offshore wind generation.

Strong competition has attracted almost £4bn of investment appetite for all nine transmission links worth around £1.1bn.

Five consortia have bid for the right to own and operate offshore transmission links in return for a 20-year regulated revenue stream. The current tender round has resulted in overall forecast savings of £350m for offshore wind farms and ultimately consumers.

The successful bidders from this tender round will own and operate links for around 2 gigawatts (2 GW) of renewable electricity for Britain’s first wave of offshore wind farms.