Tender for 700 MW Dutch offshore wind site pushed back

Tendering process for one of the offshore wind areas the Dutch Government planned to auction this year has been postponed and will be launched at a later time, with the specific timeline expected to be announced later this year.

The tender for a 700 MW offshore wind farm at the Ten noorden van de Waddeneilanden (TNW) Wind Farm Zone, which was envisioned to be realised in 2027, will not take place in 2022 as originally planned, with a new schedule expected to be announced later this year.

As a consequence of the decision to push back the TNW project, TenneT has now removed it from its UXO survey contract with Next Geosolutions, awarded in 2020.

Rescheduling the tender follows a decision by the State Secretary for Economic Affairs and Climate Policy from December 2021 to perform more research before finalising the TNW export cable route, following objections to the chosen route.

Back in January 2021, the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs announced that the TNW offshore wind farm zone would connect to the national grid at a high-voltage station in Eemshaven, with the cable route (Eemshaven West) running from the TNW zone to Schiermonnikoog island, coming ashore in Groningen and then connecting to the national grid in Eemshaven.

In December last year, after the decision to further review the export cable route plan, the project was added to a broader cable route investigation programme that will be undertaken to accommodate additional 10.7 GW of installed offshore wind capacity the Dutch Government announced in November 2021. 

Namely, the 700 MW TNW grid connection will be revised as an integral part of the new Wind Energy Area 5-East which, across three projects and including TNW, has a total capacity of 4.7 GW.

This new wind energy area is located north of the Ten noorden van de Waddeneilanden offshore wind farm site.

The new spatial planning procedures for 5-East cable routes also include a reinvestigation of all route options for all the projects, including Waddenzee, Eemshaven West, East etc.

Last year, several studies were carried out on behalf of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate to gain a better picture of the new landfall alternatives for offshore wind farms in the Dutch North Sea.

A study investigating possible cable routes through the Wadden area, published in October 2021, found that all seven routes that were explored have challenges in relation to ecology, agriculture, feasibility and/or permitability.

However, all the seven routes were also found to theoretically have enough room to connect 4.7 GW to the grid, so further research will have to show whether this is also possible in practice.

The State Secretary has therefore decided to combine the landfall of the 700 MW TNW and the 4 GW Wind Energy Area 5-East into one spatial programme, which will enable looking at the offshore wind grid connection in the Wadden area from an integrated perspective.

The goal of the programme is to funnel the seven route options before starting the spatial procedure.

The procedure for the export cable route and the landfall site for TNW is separate from the procedure for the wind farm. Therefore, the preparations for the wind farm site decision are continuing with no irreversible steps taken in this regard, the Government said in December.

The Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO) states on its website that a lot of preparatory work for Ten noorden van de Waddeneilanden Wind Farm Site had already been completed, including an environmental impact assessment.

As part of the preparations for the wind farm, a draft Wind Farm Site Decision (WFSD) was published in December 2021, when the site characterisation studies were also said to be nearing completion.

Both the WFSD and the results of the location studies were made available in the first quarter of this year.

RVO published Project and Site Description this February, which comprises the chapter on site characterisations only, because plans for the grid connection are yet to be determined. A complete and final document will be published in due course, RVO said.

Ten noorden van de Waddeneilanden Wind Farm Zone is located 56 kilometres offshore the north coast of the Netherlands and has one, 700 MW Wind Farm Site designated within its borders. The site covers 120 square kilometres with maintenance and safety zones include, and 71 square kilometres of wind farm area.

The site is adjacent to the existing 600 MW Gemini offshore wind farms, which are also situated within the TNW Wind Farm Zone.