The Walney Extension offshore wind farm will include 8-MW turbines from MHI Vestas and 7-MW turbines from Siemens.
DONG Energy announced it will construct the 660-MW Walney Extension Offshore Wind Farm located about 19 kilometers off the west coast of Britain in the Irish Sea. The final investment decision was made after completing the site assessments, securing the necessary approvals from authorities, and signing most of the contracts for supply and installation to build the project.
Walney Extension is expected to be fully commissioned in 2018 at which time it will become the biggest offshore wind farm in the world. It will surpass the 630-MW London Array Offshore Wind Farm commissioned by DONG Energy and its partners in 2014.
The Walney Extension wind farm will be constructed and operated under the UK’s EMR FID-enabling regime with a fixed price for the first 15 years of production.
Samuel Leupold, Executive Vice President at DONG Energy, said: “Walney Extension will deliver clean electricity to more than 460,000 UK homes, and I’m very pleased that we can now start construction of what will be the world’s biggest offshore wind farm when completed. Building this offshore wind will bring us significantly closer to realizing our strategy of having 6.5 GW of installed capacity online by 2020.”
DONG Energy has decided to apply two different turbines: 40, 8-MW turbines from MHI Vestas Offshore Wind and 47, 7-MW offshore turbines from Siemens.
Samuel Leupold added: “British offshore wind has seen phenomenal growth in recent years. A pre-requisite for long-term growth in the industry is that offshore wind eventually can compete on costs with other energy technologies. Building Walney Extension will bring us one step closer to that target, and I’m satisfied to see that we keep bringing costs down, while continuing to expand the UK supply chain. I’m also excited about the fact that turbine blades, part of the foundations and cable installation will come from UK manufacturing facilities and vessels and create local jobs.”
Currently, DONG Energy is constructing 2,080MW in the UK and Germany. When these projects including the Walney Extension are completed, DONG Energy will have built a total of 5,089 MW — the annual consumption of power to meet the electricity needs of 12.5 million Europeans.
DONG Energy
www.dongenergy.com
Filed Under: News, Offshore wind, Projects
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