Four offshore wind farm projects have successfully secured Government support for up to 20 years under the first Offshore Renewable Electricity Support Scheme (ORESS 1).

The provisional results of the offshore auction have been released, revealing a surprising average support price of €86.05/MWh.

This State-backed guaranteed price was expected to be significantly higher, with an upper cap of €150/MWh set by Minister Ryan earlier in the year.

The Government stated that this represents one of the lowest prices ever paid in an emerging offshore wind market worldwide.

For context, the average wholesale electricity price in Ireland during the past 12 months exceeded €200/MWh.

Locations

The auction has led to the procurement of over 3GW of renewable electricity capacity from four offshore wind projects: Dublin Array, Sceirde Rocks Offshore Wind Farm, North Irish Sea Array (NISA) and Codling Wind Park.

These projects will generate over 12 terawatt hours (TWh) of renewable electricity each year.

This represents the largest volume of renewable energy ever acquired through an auction in Ireland, equivalent to over one third of the country's total electricity consumption this year and more than one quarter of the projected electricity demand in 2030.

Furthermore, this amount of energy is sufficient to power over 2.5 million Irish homes per year and contribute to a reduction of over one million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.