Ofgem have appointed the preferred bidder for the first project in the second round of tenders (known as Transitional Round 2) to own and operate offshore links for the Lincs project.

This is the second largest offshore transmission project to have reached this stage; the estimated value of the assets is £282 million. Transmission Capital Partners (TCP), a consortium comprising of Transmission Capital Partners LP and International Public Partnerships, has been selected by Ofgem as the preferred bidder to own and operate the high voltage transmission link to the 250 MW Lincs offshore wind farm.

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The TCP consortium was selected following the Invitation to Tender (ITT) process run by Ofgem in which bidders compete to become offshore transmission owners (OFTOs).

The Lincs wind farm project is owned by a consortium of Centrica, Dong Energy and Siemens Project Ventures. Lincs is the second Centrica project to reach the Preferred Bidder milestone. Dong has been involved in four of the first round one projects. Both companies worked together in a joint venture on the Barrow project which TCP financially closed in September 2011.

The whole of the first phase of the second transitional tender round will link 1.4GW of offshore wind farms with a total value for the transmission assets of £1.1bn. The other projects that are part of the first phase of the second tender round are London Array (Phase 1) and Gwynt-y-Mor.

The second tender round follows Ofgem E-Serve’s first tender round which attracted almost £4 billion worth of investment appetite to own and operate £1.1 billion worth of links.

(CD/GK)