Ørsted has awarded ten local organizations around Liverpool Bay, the UK, with grants from the seventh round of the Burbo Bank Extension Community Fund.
Each of the recipients will receive a share of the GBP 120,194 windfall and therefore join other 82 groups who have already benefitted from the grants.
Approximately GBP 225,000 will be made available for community projects during the expected 25-year lifetime of the Burbo Bank Extension offshore wind project.
According to the Danish company, the fund has so far awarded GBP 787,500 in total since its launch in May 2015.
“We’ve been operating out of Merseyside for over ten years, and both our wind farms at Burbo Bank have led the way for the whole industry, being the first to pioneer new technology that is now used widely across the globe,” said Natasha Nanuck , Ørsted’s Senior Stakeholder Advisor.
“We established this fund as a way of giving back to the local community, and on our seventh round of funding it’s great to again see a variety in the deserving organisations that will benefit from the fund, both in the Liverpool Bay area, where our brand new operations and maintenance base is located, and also from across the waters in North Wales where our onshore substation is situated.”
The closing date for the next round of applications is 3 April 2019.
Burbo Bank Extension consists of 32 MHI Vestas 8MW turbines located 7km offshore Liverpool.
The 258MW project was fully commissioned in May 2017, when it became the first commercial wind farm to feature the 8MW turbines.