Energy company EnBW has installed the first of 64 turbines at the “He Dreiht” wind farm in the North Sea.
This is the first time that the largest available Vestas wind turbine has been installed. It has an output of 15 MW – one rotor revolution is enough to supply four households with electricity.
On completion, “He Dreiht” will have a capacity of 960 MW and thus generate electricity for 1.1 million households, EnBW announced. This means that the “megawind farm” will have an output comparable to that of conventional power plants.
EnBW wind farm without state subsidies
“EnBW has been planning, building and operating offshore wind farms in Germany and Europe for over 15 years,” says Michael Class, Head of Generation Portfolio Development. “EnBW He Dreiht is our largest offshore project to date and does not require state subsidies. It will make a major contribution to achieving our goal of significantly increasing the installed capacity from renewable energies from the current 6.6 GW to over 10 GW by 2030.”
“We are very pleased to partner with EnBW to provide our innovative offshore technology for He Dreiht,” says Nils de Baar, President of Vestas Northern & Central Europe. “With the installation of the first V236-15.0 MW, we have reached an important milestone both for He Dreiht and for our offshore expansion. This will help Germany to build a secure, affordable and sustainable energy system.”
The He Dreiht wind farm is being built around 85 km northwest of Borkum and around 110 km west of Helgoland. More than 500 employees will be working on this large construction site in the middle of the sea at peak times. Over 60 ships are involved in the construction. EnBW’s offshore office in Hamburg is coordinating the major project. The 64 foundations were already installed last year. The installation ship “Wind Orca” took the components on board in the port of Esbjerg in Denmark. After a twelve-hour journey to the construction site at sea, the ship placed the first turbine on the foundation that had already been laid in the seabed. Parallel to the installation of the wind turbines, the internal cabling of the wind farm is underway.
A partner consortium consisting of Allianz Capital Partners, AIP and Norges Bank Investment Management owns 49.9% of the shares in He Dreiht. EnBW’s current wind power portfolio amounts to around 1 GW. In the Baltic Sea, the energy supplier operates the wind farms “Baltic 1” (48.3 MW) and the significantly larger “Baltic 2” (288 MW). In addition to “He Dreiht” (960 MW), the existing offshore wind farms “Hohe See” (497 MW) and “Albatros” (112 MW) are located in the North Sea. In addition, EnBW and the oil company BP are developing three wind farms in the UK, “Mona”, “Morgan” and “Morven”, with a total capacity of 5.9 GW.
