Hexicon’s 32MW TwinHub has become the first ever floating wind project to land a Contract for Difference (CfD) in the UK, securing a strike price of £87.30 per megawatt-hour in the latest auction round.
The contract means that the project, which will involve two turbines built on a single foundation off the coast of Cornwall, will benefit from 15 years of revenue support once built between 2025 and 2027.
Marcus Thor, CEO at Hexicon, said: “With this decision, our TwinHub project will be the first floating offshore wind project in England and Wales to achieve this milestone and we can now progress to the delivery phase and continue engagement with the local communities, stakeholders and regulators, with the support of Celtic Sea Power.”
The £87.30/MWh sets a new benchmark for floating wind farms bidding into future floating offshore wind farms.
Floating wind was eligible this year via the government’s £75m emerging technologies pot, of which £24m had been ring-fenced for the asset class.
TwinHub is also the only floating project to have secured government support in CfD4.
Offshore Wind Industry Council co-chair Danielle Lane (Vattenfall) said she was “delighted” to see that a floating wind project has won a contract for the first time.
“The UK is a world leader in innovative floating technology and we have a huge opportunity to capitalise on this as we to ramp up our floating capacity in the years ahead, providing expertise and manufacturing big pieces of cutting-edge kit not only for projects here but for export worldwide,” she said.
It is understood that EDF and Vantage RE’s 58MW Blyth 2 floating demonstrator off the northeast coast of England also bid into the round, but has not been listed among the winners.
Aside from remote island wind farms, tidal stream projects were the other big winner within the emerging technologies pot, which benefited from £20m of ringfenced funding.
Orbital Marine’s 2.4MW Eday 1 and 4.8MW Eday 2, as well as SIMEC Atlantis Energy’s 28MW MeyGen Phase 2 and Magallanes Tidal Energy’s 5.6MW Morlais Magallanes GR3 all secured 15-year, £178.54/MWh contracts.
The first three of these projects are due to be delivered in 2026/27, while the Moralis Magallanes scheme will trigger its CfD a year earlier in 2025/26.