page_title: Wind power in the United Kingdom
section_title: Round 1
hierarchical_section_title: Wind power in the United Kingdom / Offshore wind farms / Round 1
caption_attribution_description: English: Thames Estuary and Wind Farms from Space NASA. Windfarms visible in the image are: London Array, Thanet Wind Farm, Kentish Flats Wind Farm and Gunfleet Sands Wind Farm. Kentish Flats is pictured before its 2015 extension was constructed.
context_page_description: The United Kingdom is one of the best locations for wind power in the world and is considered to be the best in Europe. Wind power contributed 20% of UK electricity generation in 2019, making up 54% of electricity generation from renewable sources. Wind power in the UK is a popular low cost generation mode which is still dropping in price and delivers a rapidly growing percentage of the electricity of the United Kingdom.
  By the beginning of August 2020, wind power production consisted of 10,911 wind turbines with a total installed capacity of over 24.0 gigawatts: 13,649 megawatts of onshore capacity and 10,415 megawatts of offshore capacity.
  This placed the United Kingdom at this time as the world's sixth largest producer of wind power. As of 2012, polling of public opinion consistently shows strong support for wind power in the UK, with nearly three quarters of the population agreeing with its use, even for people living near onshore wind turbines. The UK Government has committed to 40GW of installed offshore capacity by 2030, bringing overall UK wind capacity to over 50GW. This is greater than the UK's electricity demand of between 30-40GW in 2019.
context_section_description: In 1998 the British Wind Energy Association (now RenewableUK) began discussions with the government to draw up formal procedures for negotiating with the Crown Estate, the owner of almost all the United Kingdom coastline out to a distance of 12 nautical miles (22.2 km), to build offshore wind farms. The result was a set of guidelines published in 1999, to build "development" farms designed to give developers a chance to gain technical and environmental experience. The projects were limited to 10 square kilometres in size and with a maximum of 30 turbines. Locations were chosen by potential developers and a large number of applications were submitted. Seventeen of the applications were granted permission to proceed in April 2001, in what has become known as Round 1 of United Kingdom offshore wind development.
  The first of the Round 1 projects was North Hoyle Wind Farm, completed in December 2003. The final project, Teesside, was completed in August 2013. Twelve Round 1 farms in total are in operation providing a maximum power generating capacity of 1.2 GW. Five sites were withdrawn, including the Shell Flat site off the coast of Lancashire.
caption: Four offshore wind farms are in the Thames Estuary area: Kentish Flats, Gunfleet Sands, Thanet and London Array. The latter was the largest in the world from April 2013 to September 2018.
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