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At yesterday's auction Iberdrola, through AVANGRID, was awarded the rights to develop and construct an offshore wind farm with a capacity of up to 1,486 MW in the area known as Kitty Hawk, 24 nautical miles off the coast of North Carolina, in the United States.

The award will allow Iberdrola to apply its know-how to the development of the emerging offshore wind sector in the United States, whose east coast combines the optimum conditions of depth and wind resources.

In the auction, organised by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), Iberdrola's offer topped those presented by the Norwegian company Statoil, the U.S. company Wind Future and German company WPD Offshore Alpha. Other companies which had pre-qualified for bidding decided not to tender a bid at the last moment, these included the Canadian companies Northland Power and Enbridge and the wind power subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell.

Iberdrola will now have one year in which to present BOEM with an initial assessment of the area's wind potential for its approval. Following this it will have 54 months to present details of the engineering project for the construction and operation of the wind farm.

This award makes Iberdrola the world's leading electricity company in the offshore wind sector. This is all the result of a well-designed and perfectly executed investment plan which, thanks to its excellent team of engineers, has allowed it to gain the skills and experience necessary to successfully compete in a highly specialised sector.

Offshore wind, a commitment to the future for Iberdrola

Iberdrola has made a determined commitment to offshore wind energy as one of the keys to the company's future. It is currently undertaking its activities in this new business sector in the United Kingdom, Germany, France and the United States.

The company reached a milestone in 2014 when it became the first Spanish company to open a wind farm with the West of Duddon Sands (WoDS) wind farm. Iberdrola undertook this project through its British subsidiary ScottishPower Renewables and in partnership with the Danish company Dong, investing more than £1.6 billion pounds between them. WoDS has a capacity of 389 MW, enabling it to produce enough electricity to meet the demand of approximately 300,000 UK homes.

The offshore wind farm is located about 20 kilometres from Barrow-in-Furness, off the north-west coast of England. Since its launch it has achieved some extraordinary results, both in terms of production and hours available. WoDS covers an area of 67 square kilometres (km²) and its turbines, which have been supplied by the German company Siemens, have a unitary capacity of 3.6 MW.

Iberdrola is currently building the Wikinger wind farm in German waters in the Baltic Sea. It will require the investment of some €1.4 billion euros and have a capacity of 350 megawatts (MW), enough to meet the needs of over 350,000 German homes and avoid the emission of almost 600,000 tonnes of CO₂ each year into the atmosphere. The installation is located about 75 kilometres off the coast and it will be operational from October 2017.

Iberdrola is also preparing to begin the construction of its third offshore project next year, the East Anglia One wind farm, with a capacity of 714 MW, which will supply clean energy to more than 500,000 British homes. This will be the largest Spanish project in the history of the renewables sector and it will be the world's largest offshore wind farm when it enters into operation in 2020 after an investment of £2.5 billion pounds. Siemens will supply 102 turbines with a unitary capacity of 7 MW for this offshore wind farm. The turbines will be built by the German manufacturer in its new facilities located in the city of Hull, in the north-east of England.

In addition, Iberdrola has asked the British government to expand this installation up to 2,000 MW. It has, therefore, presented the United Kingdom authorities with a proposal to build the East Anglia Three wind farm, which would have a capacity of 1,200 MW.

These new facilities will be joined by the Saint-Brieuc wind farm (496 MW), in French waters, which is expected to begin operation in 2022. This wind farm will have a capacity of 496 MW and will be located in Saint-Brieuc Bay, off the coast of Brittany, 20 kilometres offshore and about 100 kilometres from the city of Rennes.

This offshore wind farm will feature 62 of the latest generation turbines with an 8 MW capacity, located within an an area of 75 km², which will be a Spanish project as it has been commissioned from Adwen, a Gamesa company dedicated to offshore wind farms.

This facility, which is being developed by Iberdrola in collaboration with the company RES and Caisse des Dépôts, will be the company’s fourth offshore wind farm when it is commissioned. The energy produced at this location is expected to meet the electricity needs of the equivalent of 850,000 inhabitants.

Iberdrola in the United States

The company has a generation capacity of 6,900 MW in the United States, mainly wind and solar power, and is building 1,800 MW of new onshore wind capacity, with phased entry into operation from now until the end of 2019.

AVANGRID is listed on the New York Stock Exchange and has assets valued at more than $31 billion dollars. It is present in 25 States with wind power generation and distribution companies, serving approximately 3.2 million customers in New York State and the states in the New England region.