Consortia form to bid for 500 MW offshore wind project in France
Eneco, Boralex, Van Oord and Diamond Generating Europe Limited (DGE), a fully owned subsidiary of Mitsubishi Corporation, have announced that they are joining forces to submit a bid to develop a 500 MW offshore wind farm off the coast of Dunkirk, north-west France.
The tender for the project was launched in April 2016. In May 2017, following five months of competitive dialogue, ten participants were selected to proceed to the final phase of the tender.
Initially scheduled for October 2017, the final specifications for the selection phase were published and sent to the pre-selected candidates in November 2018. A winner is expected to be announced by mid-2019.
The wind farm will cover a 70km2 area of the North Sea, located approximately 10km from the coast of Dunkirk.
The “Vents de Dunkerque” consortium will face competition from “Moulins de Flandre”, a joint initiative of DEME, Quadran Energies Marines and Shell announced shortly after the final phase of the tender opened.
The pre-selected bidders also include EDF, EDPR, Elicio, Enbridge, Engie, Equinor, Iberdrola, Innogy, Parkwind, RES, Valeco and Vattenfall.
It remains to be seen whether all of the above will participate in the final round. However, the demonstrable interest of such a high number of global market leaders of the offshore wind sector indicates that the award process will be extremely competitive.
