Gwynt Y Môr Offshore Wind Farm, located off the coast of North Wales, was officially opened in June 2015 as the world’s fourth largest wind farm. This innovative wind farm has the potential to generate enough renewable energy to power the equivalent annual needs of approximately 400,000 average UK households.

The project represents an investment of over £2billion into the UK and European offshore wind industry.  The Gwynt y Môr site is located 13 kilometres (8 miles) off the North Wales coast at the nearest point to shore, 16 kilometres (10 miles) from Llandudno, and 18 kilometres (11 miles) from the Wirral. Two offshore substations along with subsea and onshore interconnection cables export electricity to the National Grid. A base harbour port facility was constructed on land leased from Cammell Laird Shipyard on the River Mersey in Birkenhead, from which foundation and cable installation took place. Wind turbine installation took place from the Port of Mostyn where a dedicated operations and maintenance service base has been built to support 100 long term, skilled jobs and our wind farm in Liverpool Bay.

RWE is piloting a national apprenticeship hub in North Wales a bid to help meet the skills-needs of its growing portfolio of state-of-the-art offshore wind farms, and those of the wider UK industry. The training hub builds on the company’s award winning apprenticeship programme at Coleg Llandrillo, part of the Grŵp Llandrillo Menai, in North Wales.

The extremely successful apprenticeship programme was first launched in 2012  to generate skilled technicians that could meet the needs of Gwynt y Môr. This course has since trained nearly 30 new apprentices producing high quality technicians who have been deployed, both locally and across the UK.

2020 saw three females and five young men embark on the programme – RWE Renewables’ biggest intake to date.