The UK Green Investment Bank has paid £236m (US$370 million) to buy a stake in the 400-megawatt Rampion Offshore wind project.
The project will be developed by E.ON, which will be the GIB’s partner. Construction of the wind farm will start immediately, with Vestas contracted to supply 116 sets of its 3.54MW turbines
The project, will cost €1.9 billion, will be constructed 13 kilometres off the Sussex coast in the English Channel. It is expected to generate 1,333 gigawatt-hours of renewable electricity annually once operational—equivalent to the electricity consumption of approximately 300,000 homes.
E.ON will provide construction, operations and maintenance as well as energy management services to the project. This includes the delivery of the connection to the National Grid with marine export cables to shore, approximately 26 kilometers of onshore cables and onshore grid substation assets. E.ON will divest these offshore transmission assets under a regulated sales process.
This is GIB’s seventh investment in the UK’s offshore wind sector. Once these projects are operational they will provide over 2,500MW of renewable electricity generation capacity, enough to power more than two million homes.
Last month, GIB’s subsidiary UK Green Investment Bank Financial Services Limited also announced that it had reached first close on the world’s first offshore wind fund, designed to attract new investors to the UK.