Marine Survey Services Framework

Description

EirGrid has a requirement for the provision of a range of specialised offshore surveys, studies and reports from strategic partners. These services will cover all of EirGrid’s Offshore Wind and HVDC/AC Interconnection requirements for the immediate future. EirGrid is initiating an offshore infrastructure programme of work in response to the Government’s Policy Statement on the Framework for Phase Two Offshore Wind, published March 23. Under the policy, EirGrid will support the transformation of Ireland’s power system by developing offshore grid transmission infrastructure, which will connect offshore projects to onshore nodes on the south coast of Ireland. EirGrid’s offshore investment will facilitate a doubling of Ireland’s renewable capacity from 5GW to 10GW by 2030; improve our energy security; and reduce our reliance on imported fossil fuels. This will include offshore substations and submarine cables connecting them to the onshore grid. Offshore wind developers will compete for supports via auctions, known as ORESS1 and ORESS2, to develop windfarms that connect to the offshore substations developed by EirGrid for ORESS2. The offshore substations will also be capable of connecting higher volumes of future offshore wind when the onshore grid is sufficiently robust to absorb this capacity. The Government has set a target of 5 Gigawatts of offshore renewable energy to be delivered by 2030. The bulk of this will be met by successful ORESS1 projects, most of which are located along the east coast. EirGrid intends to establish a multi-party Framework Agreement (ultimately appointing up to 5 companies to the Framework) for the provision of these services. EirGrid envisages qualifying up to 8 Candidates from this pre-qualification process, subject to the quality of responses received. The Framework Agreement period will be for an initial duration of 5 years with the option to extend annually for up to an additional 3 years.