East Anglia One North

East Anglia One North is the third wind farm to be developed in the East Anglia Zone.

ScottishPower Renewables of the Iberdrola Group will complete the project with East Anglia Two and East Anglia Three to form the East Anglia Hub. The Proposed East Anglia Hub can reach up to 3.1 GW of installed capacity and power 2.7 million British homes.

East Anglia One North is part of the East Anglia Zone and will cover an area of 208 square kilometers. The wind turbine will be up to 282 meters above sea level. The East Anglia One North offshore wind farm will have 67 wind turbines at 12 megawatts each, for a total capacity of 714 megawatts, enough to power 659,000 UK Households

The National Infrastructure Planning considers all offshore wind farms in the East Anglia Hub as Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects with the support of the Suffolk County Council.

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Where is East Anglia One North located?

The wind farm is in the Southern North Sea in the UK waters under the Suffolk County Council. The farm is 36 kilometers away from the port at Lowestoft, which is also the location of the operations and maintenance base of East Anglia One. The farm is also 40 kilometers from Southwold.

The East Anglia Array is an offshore wind farm with four phases. The first phase is East Anglia One. This is 43 kilometers from shore and is made of 102 wind turbines that can produce up to 714 megawatts of power combined. This is enough to power about 630,000 homes. The second phase is East Anglia One North, which is 36 kilometers from shore. This phase will generate up to 800 megawatts, enough to power about 710,000 homes. East Anglia Two is 31 kilometers from shore and will also generage about 800 megawatts to power 710,000 homes. Lastly, East Anglia Three will be 69 kilometers from shore and will generate up to 1,400 megawatts, and can power up to 1.2 million homes!

Located on the east coast of the UK, the farm is 208 square kilometers large. The offshore cables will landfall at Thorpeness, Leiston.

A Nationally Significant Project

The planning inspectorate granted the status of a Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project (NSIP) to East Anglia One North. These projects related to energy, transport, water, or waste were streamlined in 2008 by the UK government to receive development consent instead of separate lot consents at the local level.

Nationally Significant Projects bypass local requirements and allow these large projects to push through under the management of the planning inspectorate. The relevant Secretary of State provides the approvals.

Ownership of the Project

The ownership of the project 100% belongs to ScottishPower Renewables, the UK arm of the Iberdrola Group.

Schedule of the Project

The examination closed in July 2021, while in January 2022, the Secretary of State completed the second round of consultations. The second round of talks included ScottishPower Renewables, Marine Management Organization, Suffolk City Council, Natural England, and other interested parties.

According to the National infrastructure planning website, in March 2022, the Secretary of State decided to provide a development consent order to East Anglia One North as recommended by the planning inspectorate.

In 2023 the construction is planned to begin after the project meets the requirements from the East Suffolk Council as per the development consent order. The target of ScottishPower Renewables is to commission the 800-MW operational capacity farm by 2026.

Wind Turbine Specifications

The farm will use up to 67 wind turbines with a maximum blade tip reaching a height of 282 meters above sea level.

Siemens Gamesa is the preferred vendor as Iberdrola used them in other phases.

Offshore Wind Power

The farm will generate electricity from 800 megawatts of installed capacity. The electricity produced by the wind farm can power an estimated 659,000 households.

Associated Infrastructure of the Project

Four offshore platforms will get built and will connect via platform link cables.

The offshore platforms will connect to an onshore infrastructure via two export cables. After landfall at Thorpeness, six single-core underground cables will travel for 9 kilometers before they link to the national grid substation.

The East Anglia Hub is made of the four East Anglia wind farm phases (One, One North, Two, and Three), the Great Yarmouth base, and the Lowestoft base. The Great Yarmouth base is home to construction and marshalling and employed about 3,000 people for the East Anglia One construction. The Lowestoft base is a new, state of the art base, for East Anglia operations and maintenance

The onshore substation will accommodate East Anglia One North and East Anglia Two Offshore Wind Farms. The onshore substation will have Gas Insulated Switchgear (GIS) and Air Insulated Switchgear (AIS).

The project will use cable sealing end compounds for the National Grid substation’s overhead line.

The onshore substation is North of Friston, Suffolk.

East Anglia Hub

The East Anglia Hub is a group of three offshore wind farms under development in the East Anglia Zone. East Anglia Zone already has an existing wind farm–East Anglia One, which ScottishPower Renewables commissioned in 2020.

East Anglia One North is the only offshore wind farm and the third to develop in the zone. Developers started constructing East Anglia Three in August 2022.