Balfour Beatty, HICL and INPP win places on Ofgem offshore transmission shortlists

Ofgem has confirmed the shortlist of bidders competing to own and operate £2bn of offshore transmission links to the Dudgeon, Rampion and Race Bank windfarms off the coasts of Norfolk and Sussex, including Balfour Beatty, HICL and International Public Partnerships Limited.

The links are the first three of five to be tendered under the fifth round of the Offshore Transmission Owner regime.

Ofgem estimated the current round, which will see the tender process for the remaining two projects begin on 13 March, has a value of £2bn and will connect 2.3GW of generation capacity, making it the biggest tender round to date.

For the Dudgeon and Rampion links the shortlist comprised Balfour Beatty Investments; Equitix; Diamond Transmission Partners, which is a consortium of Mitsubishi Corporation and HICL; Mari Energy Transmission, which is a consortium of Macquarie Capital and Frontier Power Limited; and Transmission Capital Partners, a consortium of International Public Partnerships Limited and Transmission Capital Partners.

For Race Bank, the list was same apart from Mari missed out in favour of Triton Transmission, a consortium of Dalmore Capital and a DIF infrastructure fund.

"The shortlists show there is strong competition to own and operate the links, which will help keep costs low for consumers," the energy regulator said.

The five shortlisted bidders for each of will now go through to the final invitation-to-tender stage, following which Ofgem will appoint the OFTO for each link.

Each OFTO will receive a guaranteed revenue stream for 20 years under the terms of their licence, subject to the availability of their assets.

Ofgem said it will announce the details of the preferred bidder for each project at the completion of each ITT evaluation stage.