National Grid ESO has confirmed less than half of the offshore wind capacity awarded in the Crown Estate Scotland’s ScotWind auction will be considered in its current review of coordinated grid connections.
The system operator plans to include 10.7GW of capacity awarded in the leasing round as part of its current Holistic Network Design (HND) review, according to an update on its website.
It will make “minor adjustments” to the queue order of projects to ensure at least one project from each of the ScotWind seabed leasing zones is represented in the HND.
This is despite 17 projects totalling 24.8GW securing leases in the auction last month.
National Grid ESO has said it will aim to provide updated connection agreements for the remainder of ScotWind projects in the first quarter of 2023.
It added it will make use of a “staged offer process”, which means connecting some of the capacity of certain projects by 2030 and the rest at a later date.
The majority of successful developers in ScotWind have signalled their desire to grid connect their projects by the end of the decade.
National Grid ESO has argued that holding a follow-up process is the “appropriate approach” to ensure the HND is published in June 2022 as planned.
Publication of the review, which is being undertaken as part of BEIS’ wider Offshore Transmission Network Review, is already delayed by two months.
By selecting one ScotWind site from each seabed leasing zone, National Grid ESO also aims to better assess the value of coordinating projects between different zones.
The operator added: “The majority of ScotWind projects have initial connection agreements in place. We will take account of lease option outcomes and current connections application data to determine which projects receive their updated connection agreements first.
“More details for developers this relates to can be found in our recent Connection Contract Update Programme open letter.”