Walney Offshore Wind Farm is an offshore wind farm currently under construction 14km west of Walney Island off the coast of Cumbria, in the Irish Sea, England. It is being developed by Walney (UK) Offshore Windfarms Limited, a partnership between Dong Energy and Scottish and Southern Energy. The farm is immediately north west of the West Duddon wind farm and also to the west of Ormonde wind farm. The farm is in water depths ranging from 19m to 23m and will cover an area of approximately 73 sq km.

In 2004 Dong Energy was awarded a 50 year lease from The Crown Estate to develop a wind farm off Walney Island, as part of the second UK offshore wind farm tendering process known as "Round 2". The Walney Offshore Wind Farm will be constructed sequentially in two phases with overlapping installation activities to reduce the overall construction timeframe.

The Walney Offshore Wind Farm project involves constructing the wind turbines and their foundations, building two offshore substations and installing two undersea power cables, one for each phase, and two short onshore cables to connect to two existing onshore Electrical substations for connection into the UK National Grid. Phase 1 will connect to a substation at Heysham, phase 2 will connect to substation at Stanah, south of Fleetwood. Both undersea cables will pass close by the Barrow wind farm. All the construction work is expected to take less than 2 years, with both phases operational by the end of 2011.

Both phases will have 51 turbines giving a nameplate capacity of 367 MW.

Planning of Walney Offshore Wind Farm

The key planning consents obtained are the following:

• Consent under section 36 of the Electricity Act 1989 to construct and operate a windfarm. This will also cover the offshore cables and other infrastructure.

• FEPA License under section 5 of the Food and Environment Protection Act 1985, concerning the protection of marine ecosystems.

• Consent under section 34 of the Coast Protection Act 1949 in order to make provision for the safety of navigation in relation to the export cables.

• Planning permission under section 90 of the Town and County Planning Act 1990, sought as part of the section 36 application, for the onshore elements of the works (“Deemed planning permission”).

• Extinguishment of public rights of navigation will be requested under the Energy Act 2004 for the areas of seabed directly covered by the offshore structures.