Independent renewable energy developer Element Power has entered the offshore wind market by taking over the development of the North Irish Sea Array (NISA) offshore wind site in the Irish Sea from Gaelectric.
The NISA site is located off the east coast of Ireland and has a potential capacity of up to 750MW, enough to power more than half a million Irish homes a year, the new developer said.
Development work has been ongoing at the site for several years and has included site assessments and environmental and technical constraint analysis that show its suitability for an offshore wind farm.
”This site, in the relatively shallow waters of the east coast and near the large electrical demands of Dublin and the fast-growing data center industry, is ideally located to be in the first wave of large scale offshore projects to be built in Ireland to meet our 2030 renewable energy targets,” Mike O’Neill , CEO of Element Power, said.
“The time is right for Ireland to be part of the global expansion of offshore wind and reap the opportunity to develop a new industry and supply chain that generates employment and local benefits. We believe that, while onshore wind will continue to be the primary and most cost-effective source of renewable energy in Ireland well into the next decade, 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. For this to happen, however, the government must put in place the necessary licensing regime now to ensure that investment can continue over the coming years in the development of this critical future infrastructure.”
Element Power has developed over 220MW of onshore wind projects now operational across Ireland, with another 1GW of capacity in the pipeline, and is the developer of the Greenlink electricity interconnector, a 500MW infrastructure project that will link Ireland with the UK.
“Our experience and expertise in large-scale onshore wind and grid transmission solutions together with sub-sea HVDC projects will complement our offshore development plans and we look forward to taking the NISA project forward,” O’Neill said.