Offshore staff
STAVANGER, Norway – SSE Renewables and Equinor have reached financial close on the first two phases of the Dogger Bank offshore wind farm in the UK North Sea.
The total senior debt facilities across Dogger Bank A and B is £4.8 billion ($6.4 billion), plus ancillary facilities of around £0.7 billion ($934 million). The final group of lenders consists of 29 banks and three export credit agencies.
Located more than 130 km (81 mi) offshore northeast England, the project is being built in three 1.2-GW phases.
Dogger Bank A and B will each require total capex of around £3 billion ($4 billion), including offshore transmission capex of around £800 million ($1 billion) per phase.
Dogger Bank will be the first project to use the largest commercially available turbine in the world, the 13-MW GE Haliade-X.
When fully completed in 2026, each phase is expected to be able to produce 6TWh of renewable electricity, totalling 18TWh annually – enough to supply 5% of the UK’s demand and equivalent to powering six million UK homes each year.
SSE Renewables is leading the construction of the 3.6 GW project, and Equinor will lead the wind farm’s operations.
Onshore construction is under way for the first two phases. Offshore construction for Dogger Bank A is due to begin in 2Q 2022. For both phases, onshore and offshore cable and all turbine foundations will be installed by 2023. First power is expected in summer 2023 and summer 2024 for Dogger Bank A and B, respectively, with commercial operations to begin the following year.
The third phase, Dogger Bank C, is being developed on a different timescale with financial close to follow at a later stage.
11/30/2020
