Wind Energy and renewable energy blog

Grid Approvals Needed Immediately for 3rd Round of Offshore Wind Farms

Grid upgrades need to be approved immediately if the wind energy industry is to avoid delays in the build-out of new offshore wind farms according to the British Wind Energy Association.

The announcement of the 3rd round of UK offshore wind farms made by the Crown Estate on Friday could lead to a quarter of the UK’s electricity coming from offshore wind energy. However the 32 Gigawatts of potential capacity will only be built if it can be connected to new UK grid infrastructure.

Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change Ed Miliband said on Friday “we know that there is still a huge amount of work to do but today marks a very important first step”.

Crown Estate CEO Roger Bright said that the round 3 programme has cross party support – and that this will help in terms of investor confidence. It will however be interesting to see if the Conservative position on offshore wind energy changes if government money is required to contribute towards the new grid infrastructure or if electricity bills need to go up substantially to pay for the works.