Denmark’s largest offshore wind farm is inaugurated

For Denmark’s largest wind power project, Siemens supplied, installed, and commissioned 111 wind turbines, each with a capacity of 3.6 megawatts (MW) and a rotor diameter of 120 meters.

The owners of the wind project are the Danish utility company DONG Energy (50 percent) as well as the two pension fund companies Pension Danmark (30 percent) and PKA (20 percent). In addition, together with DONG Energy, Siemens will handle the wind projects’ maintenance for a period of five years. The wind power plants’ total electrical generating capacity of 400 megawatts will be sufficient to supply about 400,000 Danish households with clean electricity, thereby covering about four percent of Denmark’s overall power demand.

The Anholt offshore wind power plant is located off Denmark’s eastern coast, about 20 kilometers northeast of the Jutland peninsula. Over a period of less than nine months, Siemens installed all 111 wind turbines over a surface area of 88 square kilometers in water depths of up to 19 meters. “Despite some challenging weather conditions, we have successfully executed the Anholt offshore wind power project on schedule,” states Markus Tacke, CEO of the Wind Power Division at Siemens’ Energy Sector.

For Siemens, Anholt is already the fifth offshore wind power plant to be formally inaugurated within just a few short weeks. In July and August, the world’s largest offshore wind power plant – the London Array (630 MW) – as well as Britain’s Greater Gabbard (504 MW) and Lincs (270 MW) projects officially went on online. In Germany, the first commercial offshore wind power plant in the North Sea, Riffgat (108 MW), was officially inaugurated in August.

“Implementation of our offshore projects in Europe is running at full speed, ” notes Tacke. “So far, Siemens has installed more than 3,900 megawatts of offshore wind power capacity. Our projects are reaching the magnitude of fossil-fuel power plants and we are making significant progress with efforts to industrialize offshore wind power, thereby further reducing the costs of offshore wind power,” added Tacke.

Siemens is at the front of the market for offshore wind power plants, grid connections and offshore wind service. To date, the company has installed offshore wind turbines delivering a total generating capacity of 3.9 gigawatts (GW). Currently, Siemens has orders for offshore projects totaling a capacity of about 5 GW.

Including the Anholt wind project, Siemens has already successfully installed nine offshore wind power plants that together offer production capacity of almost 1.1 GW. The Danish government is planning to meet one half of the country’s demand for electricity with wind power by 2020. As of 2012, wind power already accounted for about 30 percent of that nation’s generated electricity. Denmark’s target is to become independent of fossil fuels for electrical power generation by 2050.