Winner for 600 MW offshore wind project in France

Environment Minister of France Francois de Rugy has announced on 14th of June that a consortium led by the French state-owned utility EDF Group, via its EDF Renewables subsidiary has won a contract to design, build, operate and maintain the future 600 MW Dunkirk offshore wind farm in the north-west of France.

The project involves the development of an offshore wind farm spanning 70km2 in the North Sea, approximately 10km from the coast of Dunkirk. The wind farm will feature forty-five wind turbines producing 2.3 terawatt-hours of electricity per year.

The wind farm is planned to come into service in 2026.

EDF has partnered with German Innogy and Canadian Enbridge to compete with companies such as Engie, EDPR and E.ON consortium and Elicio, Total and Orsted consortium. Total of 9 international teams have shown their interest in the project, and 7 of them made the bid.

According to the ministry, the tariff offered by EDF consortium was significantly lower than 50 euros per megawatt hour (56.30 USD/MWh). As a comparison, a tender for an onshore wind farm of 516 MW that was awardered couple of days before the Dunkirk project had the winning tariff of 63 euros/MWh (70.69 USD/MWh). The ministry said the price offered by EDF was comparable to the best prices observed in offshore wind projects in Europe which demonstrates the competitiveness of the French wind industry.

Dunkirk project is the fourth offshore project EDF group has won in France through a public-sector tender process. EDF operates 58 nuclear reactors in France which account for over 75 percent of the country’s electricity needs. EDF is now expanding into wind and solar generation. France is also rapidly increasing power generation capacity from renewable sources to reduce its dependence on nuclear energy and gradually reduce coal power production.