Transactions where offshore wind switched hands

This is the ownership history: who held a wind farm before today’s owners, and what each change of hands involved. The owners listed on a project page are only the picture as it stands now. Capacity here is stake-weighted — a developer selling a quarter of a 1,320 MW farm counts as 330 MW changing hands, not 1,320.

Some deals are counted but carry no capacity. Where the size of the stake was never disclosed (96 deals) we cannot say how much moved, so the deal is listed and drawn as an open circle in the first chart but left out of the capacity totals. Three other kinds move no capacity at all and stay out of the volume chart: a project written off, a seller leaving with nobody taking the stake, and partners founding a project together. A few more are left out because multiplying the stake by the farm’s capacity would overstate what was really bought — a holding company sold whole, or a single agreement recorded once for each farm it covered. Each one says so in its own detail.

The charts start in 2010. 19 deals were announced before it, back to 2001, one or two to a year; they stretched the time axis by 9 years to show 2.8% of the capacity traded. They are still in the database below, in every total on this page, and on their project pages, and the volume chart’s table lists every year on record. All three charts share one time axis, so a deal, its price and the year’s bar sit in the same place on each.

A price is the source's own figure, never restated. Its EUR value is the amount in the currency the source stated, converted at the European Central Bank's monthly average rate for the month the deal was announced, unless the source gave its own EUR figure. Implied €/MW exists only where a value was disclosed: 74 of 399 deals. We never estimate an undisclosed number. What each figure covers is recorded per deal, read from the source: a price for the equity, that price plus a commitment to fund construction, an enterprise value, a share of costs, or not stated.

Value including debt. Where the farm company's accounts from before the deal are available, we add its borrowings from banks and bondholders and subtract its cash. Loans from the owners themselves are not added, because a buyer takes them over with the shares. Where a UK farm's export cables were still inside it at the deal, their value as set by Ofgem when they were sold to the grid operator is taken off, whoever paid for them, so every figure describes the wind farm the buyer keeps; any loan that paid for the cables counts as debt like any other. Where the buyer or seller stated the value including debt, their figure is used instead. Each step, and the document it comes from, is shown in the deal's detail. The medians use the 10 years to the data date.

Value at completion. While a farm is being built, its loans are drawn as the builders are paid, so the debt on the day of a deal mostly shows how far construction had got. For a stake bought during construction we therefore show the finished farm the buyer bought into: the price for the shares, the owners' money paid in afterwards to finish the build, and the debt the farm carried once built, less its cash and any export cables later sold. These come from the accounts of the company the buyer bought into, read from after the farm was finished and before any money went back to the owners. Because they are read afterwards, they include any cost overruns the buyer then had to fund. Where those accounts are not yet available, we record how the build is financed (bank loans or the owners' own money).

Every deal lists the documents behind it, and the first is the one its figures rest on. Links go to the original page, or to an archived copy where the original is no longer online. We link to press coverage but do not reproduce it.

Current ownership by developer is on Developers; each project's own deal history is on its project page.