Atlantic Array

RWE npower renewables has been announced as development partner to take forward around 4,000 megawatts of offshore wind energy projects in the UK. Click here to view a video of Paul Coffey speaking on this.

Community Consultation summary report now available here (PDF | 1.1 MB) .
 
Background
On 4 June 2008 The Crown Estate launched its Round 3 leasing programme for the delivery of up to 25 gigawatts (GW) of new generation capacity from offshore wind by 2020.

In March 2009, RWE npower renewables submitted a bid to The Crown Estate under this third licensing round for UK offshore wind farms.

Our bid was successful and we were awarded the development rights for Bristol Channel Zone (Round 3 Zone 8) which is located in the outer Bristol Channel.
To see the location of the Bristol Channel Zone please refer to the location map by clicking the link on the right hand side of this page. The location map shows Bristol Channel Zone boundary in black and the site of the proposed Atlantic Array wind farm outlined in red.

The Project

We are proposing to develop a wind farm with the capacity to generate up to 1500 megawatts (MW) of renewable energy within the Bristol Channel Zone, known as Atlantic Array.  The wind farm would be located around 14 kilometres (km) from closest point to shore on the North Devon coast, 16km from closest point to shore the South Wales coast, and 13km from Lundy Island.

The proposed wind farm has an agreed connection point to the electricity network with National Grid.  This  will enable power to be exported from the wind farm into the national grid.

The annual generation expected at the site would be equivalent to the approximate domestic needs of around 1.1 million average UK households¹.  This is equivalent to over 40% of the domestic electricity consumption for the South West of England or over 90% of the domestic electricity consumption for Wales².

What activities are taking place?
Since being awarded the Bristol Channel Zone in 2010, we have been focusing on carrying out the assessments to learn more about the site.  This work has been undertaken in consultation with a range of statutory bodies.  The findings from these surveys, and early results from our assessments, have been published in a document called the Preliminary Environment Information. This document is now available on this website. We are currently undertaking more extensive surveys around the wind farm site for our Environmental Impact Assessment. The results of these will be drawn up into a Draft Environmental Statement which, when finished, will be available for the public to view.   

We undertook our first round of public consultation on the Preliminary Environmental Information for Atlantic Array Offshore Wind Farm between the 10th September 2011 and 10th November 2011.  Information produced to support the public consultation can be viewed by clicking the Consultation tab on the right of this page.  We are currently analysing the results of the public consultation, and feedback from local communities will be incorporated into the Draft Environmental Statement which will be submitted with our planning application.

Further public consultation based on the Draft Environmental Statement will take place in mid 2012.

Notes
¹Energy predicted to be generated by the proposal is derived using long term wind speeds calculated by meteorological models seeded with historical weather data obtained from satellite, surface-based and airborne measurement systems.  This enables a calculation to be made to estimate the average annual energy production for the site based on 250 turbines each of rated capacity 6.15 MW. The energy capture predicted and hence derived homes equivalent or emissions savings figures may change as further data are gathered."
 Equivalent homes supplied is based on an annual electricity consumption per home of 4700 kWh. This figure is supported by recent domestic electricity consumption data available from The Digest of UK Energy Statistics and household estimates and projections from the UK Statistics Authority.
²Regional and local electricity consumption statistics sourced from The Department of Energy and Climate Change Energy Trends December 2008.