A coordinated approach
The Morgan Offshore Wind Project and the Morecambe Offshore Windfarm were scoped into the Pathway to 2030 workstream of the UK Government’s Offshore Transmission Network Review (“OTNR”).
As part of the OTNR, National Grid assessed options to improve the coordination of offshore wind farm connections and associated transmission networks. In July 2022, the UK Government published the Pathway to 2030 Holistic Network Design Report which set out the results of the OTNR and its proposed approach to connecting 50GW of offshore wind to the UK national grid.
This concluded that the Morgan Offshore Wind Project and the Morecambe Offshore Windfarm should work collaboratively to connect the wind farms to the national grid at Penwortham in Lancashire. The developers (EnBW/bp and Cobra/Flotation Energy) were involved in this process and agree with this conclusion, and as a result are developing the transmission assets associated with each offshore wind farm together.