First Flight Wind is developing an offshore wind farm in the waters off the Co. Down coast.
In December 2011, The Crown Estate, as the owner of the UK seabed, launched a tender to select a developer for a 600MW offshore wind farm within the Tender Resource Zone off the south east coast of Co. Down.* The First Flight Wind consortium was selected in October 2012.
Since then we have been carrying out extensive stakeholder engagement as well as survey and zone assessment work in order to establish the location and design of the offshore project. Following this work we have determined that a capacity of 300 to 400 MW is best able to minimise potential impacts on some existing activities including fishing and shipping. Read more about the capacity reduction here.
The right to develop this area and build an offshore wind farm is subject to First Flight Wind being successful in gaining all necessary consents. The consents process is carried out by Northern Ireland statutory bodies and concerns many aspects of the construction, operation and eventual decommissioning of the offshore wind farm.
You can also find out more about the proposal process timeline, and how we are consulting the community.
*The area under consideration was identified through a Strategic Environmental Assessment, carried out by the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment, as potentially suitable for offshore wind development, subject to project-level mitigation.
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