Moray West Offshore Wind Farm, part of the growing Ocean Winds portfolio of UK projects has secured £2bn of non-recourse project finance and reached financial close. The project has been supported to reach this stage by its primary sponsor Ocean Winds,a joint venture between EDP Renewables and ENGIE dedicated to offshore wind, and from Ignitis Group as minority shareholder. 

Moray West is the first UK offshore wind farm to rely in majority on corporate power purchase agreements (CPPAs) for the commercialisation of its output. CPPAs were signed with long-term strategic partners, for more than 50% of the project’s output, enabling the rapid progress of the project. A CfD was secured for a third of the installed capacity in the UK Allocation Round 4 (AR4) to commercialise the remainder of the project’s output.

This approach has enabled the project to support key elements of the UK supply chain to grow capacity in some cases and maintain a pipeline of work in others. Moray West is the first CfD AR4 offshore project to reach financial close.

Financial Close allows the project to move to secure the remaining elements of supply chain activity in preparation for offshore installation works in later 2023. The project is set to be generating full power by 2025.  Moray West remains on track to deliver low-cost renewable energy, supporting the UK and Scottish renewable energy targets and providing the equivalent of 1.33 million households a year with access to long-term, low-cost, low-carbon electricity.

In the United Kingdom, OW now owns a portfolio of more than 6GW of offshore wind farms: in addition to the 882 MW now under construction of Moray West, OW operates Scotland’s largest fully operational offshore wind farm, Moray East with 950 MW. The company is developing also the following projects: Caledonia, a 2 GW project featuring fixed and floating foundations adjacent to the existing Moray Firth and developed 100% by OW; Arven, a– 1.8 GW floating offshore project east of Shetland in partnership with Mainstream Renewable Power; and a further floating offshore project also east of Shetland of 500 MW developed 100% by OW.