UK company plans multi-connection offshore substations for Celtic Sea floating wind

Celtic Sea Power (CSP) has launched a tender for offshore survey services that would inform its project off Pembrokeshire, where CSP plans to build one or two multi-connection offshore substations to support the deployment and grid-connection of floating offshore wind in the Celtic Sea.

Under the tender, open until 20 March, Celtic Sea Power is looking to award a contract valued at GBP 3 million (approximately €3.4 million) and to start the survey work in mid-April this year.

Running until the end of June, the offshore survey campaign CSP seeks is to be designed to inform a future impact assessment of the Pembrokeshire Demonstration Zone (PDZ), a 90-square-kilometre area located some 15 kilometres off the south Pembrokeshire coastline that the company secured with The Crown Estate in 2018 (CSP was known as Wave Hub at the time).

The PDZ is planned to facilitate a coordinated grid solution from the test and demonstration phase to commercial phases via one or two multi-connection Offshore Substations (MOSs) accommodating up to 2.2 GW of offshore wind capacity from multiple wind farm developers in a coordinated and stepped approach.

For the surveys, CSP is seeking to appoint consultants to provide preliminary geophysical and environmental site investigation services to support the development, the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) process, and ultimately consenting of the MOS and an Export Cable Corridor.

In the Celtic Sea, The Crown Estate plans to deliver an initial 4 GW of energy capacity by 2035, with the region assessed to have the potential to accommodate up to 24 GW by 2045.

The UK’s seabed authority, in charge of waters off England, Wales and Northern Ireland, is expected to offer floating wind areas to the market via competitive tender in mid-2023.

So far, the seabed manager has updated developers on how it intends to support the opportunities presented by the floating wind in the Celtic Sea and is currently refining its broad “Areas of Search” into a series of smaller Project Development Areas (PDAs), as well as undertaking offshore surveys of the broad areas it identified earlier.

In order to further accelerate the leasing process, the work to identify the final PDAs is being undertaken simultaneously with the plan-level Habitats Regulations Assessment.