Engie and EDP Renewables (EDPR) have jointly submitted a pre-qualification bid to construct a wind farm with a capacity between 250MW and 750MW off the coast of Dunkirk in France.
The bid is part of a competitive dialogue procedure in France’s third round of tenders to select potential developers and define an area best suited for development of offshore wind farms off Dunkirk.
The competitive dialogue procedure is being carried out in two stages: pre-selection and selection.
This first stage concerns pre-selection of candidates based on their technical and financial capabilities. Pre-selection started with consultation with potential developers, who had until 1 February to ask questions, which have been answered and published by the country’s Energy Regulation Commission (CRE) on 15 February.
Deadline for the submission of applications to participate in the second phase of the competitive dialogue was 28 February, after which the CRE has a period of one month to process the applications.
Within the one-month period, CRE will deliver the list of candidates it proposes to select for the second phase of the competitive dialogue to the Minister for Energy, who will then designate successful candidates, notify all other candidates on the rejection of their applications, and invite selected candidates to participate in the selection phase of the competitive dialogue.
The wind farm off Dunkirk is expected to be commissioned in 2022.
Engie and EDPR have previously worked together on the 500MW Dieppe-Le Tréport and the 500MW Islands of Yeu and Noirmoutier offshore wind projects.
The two companies are also jointly developing the 24MW Leucate floating pilot wind farm project in the Mediterranean, and are co-investing partners to the 25MW WindFloat Atlantic Project in Portugal.
“With an energy mix relying more than 60% on renewable energies in France, ENGIE is a major player in the energy transition in the country. Already a leader in on-shore wind, we hope to show, with this bid, that we are actively contributing to the consolidation of a French offshore wind industry, whether free-standing or floating,” said Gwénaëlle Huet , Managing Director of ENGIE France Renewables.
France had already held two tenders for offshore wind: one in 2011, which allowed the allocation of four zones off the Fécamp, Courseulles-sur-Mer, Saint-Brieuc and Saint-Nazaire, with a total capacity of nearly 2,000MW; the other in 2013, for the installation of 1,000MW of capacity spread across two areas off Tréport and the islands of Yeu and Noirmoutier.
The Round 3 tender comes within the framework of the implementation of the Multi-annual energy programme (PPE) which sets out the plan for the development of 3GW of offshore wind capacity in France by 2023, with further 3GW in the pipeline post-2023. The program also calls for the approval of up to 2GW of floating wind and tidal projects in addition to the 100MW that will be in service by 2023.