Ocean Winds – a 50:50 JV between Engie and EDPR – expects to reach financial close on the 882MW offshore Moray West Wind Farm by November (2022).

The JV expects to kick start construction shortly after finalising commercial contracts.

Moray West will be located 25 miles from the Aberdeenshire coast in Scotland adjacent to the Moray East Offshore Wind Farm.

The project will feature:

• 60 wind turbines with a generating capacity of 14.7MW each – contract awarded to Siemens Gamesa
• substructures and monopile foundations
• inter-array cables
• 2 offshore substation platforms – contract awarded to Siemens Energy / Lemants consortium
• 2 offshore export cable circuits – contract awarded to Nexans
• onshore cable jointing bays and cabling for 2 underground circuits from landfall to Whitehillock
• onshore substation at Whitehillock
• onshore underground cabling between Whitehillock substation and Blackhillock substation – contract awarded to Nexans

The project commenced in 2016 and the necessary consents were secured in 2019. It is expected to be completed in early 2025 with an operational life of over 25 years.

The developers missed the third CfD auctions round organised by the UK Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) in 2019, but were awarded one in July (2022) for 294MW of capacity in the fourth auction round.

The JV secured an offtaker deal for 350MW of the wind farm's output in June (2022).

Ocean Winds was established in May 2019 as a co-controlled 50/50 offshore wind JV. It is the exclusive investment vehicle for EDP through its subsidiary EDPR.

EDP plans to inject €1.5 billion ($1.58bn) in Ocean Winds to support the development and construction of its offshore wind projects, which, in addition to Moray West, includes:

• Tréport and Noirmoutier offshore wind farms, France (992MW) – in development
• Leucate floating wind pilot (30MW) – in construction

Ocean Winds was contacted for comment but had not replied by the time of publication.