Offshore ‘worth billions’ to UK

The UK offshore wind industry could be worth as much as £2.9bn to the country’s economy by 2030, according to a new report by the Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult.

The report – ‘Economic Value of Offshore Wind: Benefits to the UK of Supporting the Industry’ – said UK offshore wind is cost-benefit neutral with a strike price of £105 and 30% UK content.

But, it added, that the industry is already doing better than this, and each additional 10% of UK content is worth a net £500m to £600m, depending on strike price.

Each £10 strike price reduction is worth £240m to £350m, depending on the level of UK content, the report said.

The gross value added to the UK per GW installed, given current UK content of 32%, is £1.8bn. This is estimated to increase to £2.9bn by 2030, if a projection of 65% UK content can be achieved, it added.

“If the next UK auction round achieved a strike price of £90 and 50% UK content, this would represent an estimated £1.7bn per GW net benefit for the winning bid,” ORE Catapult said.

ORE Catapult chief executive Andrew Jamieson said: “Continued cost reduction and increasing amounts of UK content will significantly increase the economic value of new offshore wind projects.”

Meanwhile, ORE Catapult is seeking to expand the offshore wind coverage of its System Performance, Availability and Reliability Trend Analysis (Sparta) project.

The Sparta system for wind farm owner/operators creates a database for sharing anonymised offshore wind farm performance and maintenance data to improve output and bring down costs.

The call to expand the programme coincides with the publishing of information on the first full year of operations in the Sparta Portfolio Review 2016.

The review found that newer wind farms, further from shore, tend to have lower availability but higher capacity factors due to higher wind speeds and more modern turbines.

It also found that in the summer months, areas with higher wind speeds give higher capacity factors, but this trend is reversed during autumn and winter as “adverse weather conditions can mean more non-access days which will impact on a wind farm’s performance”.

Sparta steering group chair Adrian Fox said: “Industry members are now working to widen membership and reporting outside of the UK, enabling them to undertake deeper insight and analysis and make more informed decisions regarding offshore wind farm management.”

Image: reNEWS