E.ON announces sale of transmission assets at Humber Gateway

Balfour Beatty Investments and Equitix were selected by Ofgem in September 2015 as the preferred bidder to own and operate the offshore transmission link. The divestment is necessary due to regulatory requirements relating to the ownership of transmission and generation asset.

The final sale price for the transmission assets is £162.9m. The annual revenue required to cover the transmission network charges that E.ON’s Humber Gateway will pay for the next 20 years, will be proportionally the lowest amongst all previous Offshore Transmission Owner (OFTO) transactions. Therefore, it is the most competitive OFTO assets disposal for an offshore wind farm developer in the UK to date.

Humber Gateway is one of several major renewable energy projects in E.ON’s portfolio in the UK, which also includes London Array, the world’s largest operational offshore wind farm, Blackburn Meadows Biomass Plant in Sheffield and the Rampion Offshore Wind Farm project currently in construction 13km off the Sussex coast.

The Humber Gateway wind farm, which remains 100 percent owned by E.ON, has 73 turbines located 8km off the Holderness coast and went into full operation in May 2015. It has a capacity of 219MW, which is enough electricity to power 170,000 homes or around one and a half times the size of Hull.