Element Power to develop 750 MW offshore wind project in Ireland

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Element Power has announced that it has taken over development of the North Irish Sea Array (NISA) offshore wind site in the Irish Sea from Gaelectric. This marks Element Power’s first investment in offshore wind power.

The NISA site is located off the east coast of Ireland and has a potential capacity of up to 750 MW, enough to power more than half a million Irish homes a year.

Development work has been ongoing at the site for several years and has included detailed site assessments and environmental and technical constraint analysis that show its suitability for an offshore wind farm. The site is advantageous due to its close proximity to the large electrical demands of Dublin and the fast-growing data centre industry.

The project will add to Element Power's portfolio of over 220 MW operational onshore wind projects across Ireland, and a further 1 GW of capacity in development. The company envisage this project being part of a wave of large-scale offshore projects to be built in Ireland to meet its 2030 renewable energy targets.

Element Power has attributed its decision to enter the offshore wind market to the rapid improvements in the technical and commercial viability of offshore wind, which have mainly been caused by success of the industry in a handful of European countries, like the UK, Denmark and Germany, and resultant decrease in costs.

Already this year there has been much evidence of this success. The Netherlands held the world's first zero-subsidy offshore wind tender, with Vattenfall announcing its success in March. Germany launched its second offshore wind tender, targeting 1,610 MW capacity allocations. Just last week, India launched its first offshore wind tender with a Request for Expressions of Interest (RFEOI) for a 1 GW wind farm in the Gulf of Khambhat, off the west coast of Gujarat.

While onshore wind remains the primary and most cost-effective source of renewable energy in Ireland and is projected to do so well into the next decade, Element Power predicts that by the mid-2020s offshore wind will have become cost-effective enough for it to also be one of the main forms of renewables for the country.

Though, this will require the implementation of a licensing regime by the government, to ensure that investment can continue over the coming years in the development of the technology.