K2 Management has secured a construction monitoring contract for the 860MW Triton Knoll offshore wind farm in the UK North Sea.
The company will be in charge of monitoring permitting, design, manufacturing and construction activities and project expenditure on behalf of a consortium of international lenders.
Work is scheduled to start in the fourth quarter of this year and will be carried out until the wind farm’s commercial operation planned at the beginning of 2022.
The award follows K2’s two-year role as lender’s technical advisor for the 860MW project, delivering technical due diligence from the feasibility phase, through the Contacts for Difference auction process and mandating of lenders, until the financial close reached at the end of August.
“As the first of the 2017 CFD auction-winning projects to reach financial close; the largest capacity project to be project financed to date; and the first large scale deployment of the MHI Vestas V164-9.5MW, Triton Knoll really is a milestone project for the offshore industry,” said K2 Management’s Project Manager Vicky O’Connor .
“Working closely with the project team from the early stages of development has allowed for bankability to be inherent throughout the process, resulting in financial close being reached in a relatively short period. We are proud to have supported the project and the lending group on this milestone project and look forward to continuing this through construction.”
The Triton Knoll project will comprise 90 MHI Vestas 9.5MW turbines located 20 miles off the coast of Lincolnshire. The offshore construction will begin in late 2019 or early 2020, with commissioning expected in 2021.
Innogy, the majority equity shareholder (59%), recently signed a 15-year Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) with Ørsted, under which the Danish company will offtake 100% of the power produced by the wind farm.