Greater Gabbard Offshore Winds Limited (GGOWL)

Greater Gabbard Offshore Winds Limited was established as a joint venture partnership between Airtricity and Fluor to develop what will become the largest offshore wind farm in the world - 504MW Greater Gabbard offshore wind farm.  In May 2008, Airtricity announced that it had purchased Fluor's stake in the project and the company is now a 100% owned subsidiary of Airtricity, the renewables arm of Scottish and Southern Energy ('SSE').

The Greater Gabbard offshore wind farm involves the installation of 140 Siemens 3.6MW wind turbines located around two sand banks known as Inner Gabbard and The Galloper in the North Sea, off the Suffolk Coast.

The development includes on-site inter-array 33 kV cabling, two independent on-site offshore substation platforms, 132 kV inter-array cables (between the main substation and the second substation platform) and 132 kV seabed export cabling between the Inner Gabbard array and the landfall to the south of Sizewell Village.  In order to connect the power that is generated offshore to the electricity transmission system, a new onshore substation will be constructed at Sizewell, near Leiston in Suffolk.  This will be connected to the offshore wind farm and will link to the existing overhead transmission lines in the area. 

Onshore construction activities will commence in early July 2008 at Sizewell.  Construction offshore will commence mid 2009 with completion expected by the end of 2010. 

The project is one of the major projects to be developed out of the Governments second round of licensing and will go a significant way towards meeting the Governments renewable energy targets. 

The project will also achieve a number of firsts for offshore wind power:-

* when completed, Greater Gabbard will be the largest offshore wind farm in the world
* furthest project offshore and in deepest waters for a scale project
* first project in UK to go into International waters
* largest ever contract for acquisition of turbines from Siemens Windpower.