Ninety-five foundations are now fixed into the seabed 69 kilometres off the Suffolk coast, and a large share of the money behind them is Abu Dhabi’s.
Masdar and ScottishPower Renewables have completed foundation installation at East Anglia Three, the 1.4 GW offshore wind farm they own 50:50. Each foundation measures 20 metres high and eight metres wide and weighs more than 400 tonnes. The monopiles beneath them weigh 1,200 to 1,800 tonnes, reach 67 to 84 metres and measure up to 10.6 metres across, the largest ever installed from a jack-up vessel in Europe. Turbine installation has started on the GBP 4 billion project. Charlie Jordan, chief executive of ScottishPower Renewables, put the scale at “more than 200,000 tonnes of steel anchored spot on into a seabed area the size of almost 43,000 football pitches”.
Why it matters
A project this size gets financed long before it gets built. Completing the foundations on a build the partners expect to be fully operational by year end is, in our reading, the point where offshore wind stops being a lending decision and becomes a power plant.
What it means for MENA
Abu Dhabi money is behind the largest monopiles ever installed from a jack-up vessel in Europe, and Husain Al Meer’s offshore team is collecting the delivery record that goes with them. The equity ticket gets the headlines. I would watch the record instead. Whoever eventually builds the first offshore wind farm on a MENA coastline will want a sponsor who has already put 95 foundations in the water somewhere.
