Irish TSO awards €300 million multi-party survey contract for Phase Two offshore wind farms

Irish transmission system operator (TSO) EirGrid has awarded a multi-party framework agreement for surveys that the TSO will perform at the offshore wind area(s) the Irish government will put up for tender next. The companies that secured long-term contracts, valued at €300 million in total, are Fugro, RINA Consulting, UTEC (an Acteon company), and ACSM.

For the grid connections of Ireland’s offshore wind farms that will be built under the upcoming ORESS 2.1 auction, EirGrid is responsible for both onshore and offshore systems.

The four projects that were awarded capacity through the country’s first offshore wind auction (ORESS 1) last year have a different setup. For the Phase One offshore wind farms, EirGrid is in charge of only the onshore part of the link to the national grid while the developers are responsible for the offshore grid infrastructure. However, the TSO will eventually take ownership of the offshore grid systems for the Phase One wind farms too.

The government is currently working towards holding the ORESS 2 tenders and the first round, ORESS 2.1, is planned to open this year. Through Phase Two projects, Ireland plans to add approximately 900 MW of offshore wind generation capacity off the country’s south coast. 

EirGrid will be responsible for delivering the infrastructure that will connect the Phase Two wind farms to the onshore grid and plans to install offshore substations off the south coast of Waterford or Wexford.

According to EirGrid’s website, decisions on where precisely the offshore substations will be located, or how and where they will connect to the national electricity grid onshore, are yet to be made.

The Department for the Environment, Climate and Communications (DECC) is holding a public consultation on the proposed location for the offshore wind farm(s) off the south coast, referred to as the South Coast Designated Marine Area Plan (SC-DMAP). EirGrid plans to develop offshore electricity substation(s) and associated subsea cables after the government issues the final SC-DMAP, according to the TSO.

The multi-party framework agreement for offshore survey services the Irish TSO signed with Fugro, RINA Consulting, UTEC, and ACSM follows EirGrid initiating the offshore infrastructure programme of work in response to the government’s Policy Statement on the Framework for Phase Two Offshore Wind, under which EirGrid is in charge of the offshore grid transmission infrastructure to connect the wind farms off the south coast of Ireland to onshore nodes. 

The framework agreement, signed for an initial duration of five years with the option to extend annually for up to an additional three years, is for surveys that will cover all of EirGrid’s offshore wind and HVDC/AC interconnection requirements for the immediate future, according to the contract award notice.

The estimated value of €300 million takes into account the potential eight-year duration of the multi-party framework agreement.