Offshore Wind Energy Is on the Rise

Hamburg, 10 September 2007 - Hamburg in Germany seems to turn into the international centre for the technology discourse regarding wind energy. More than 240 experts from 16 European, Asian and North American countries met in the city in order to discuss the various technical, legal and economic aspects of offshore wind energy.

Offshore wind installations are no longer a fantastic vision, but will turn into reality in the coming five years - also in Germany which currently still lags behind the European development. At the conference, the pioneer project "alpha ventus" was presented in detail. It comprises twelve wind turbines which will be installed 45 kilometres offshore of the German island Borkum, on a total area of four square kilometres.

From summer next year, six of these turbines are supposed to generate
electricity. The most important reason for choosing this location are the measurement results which have been delivered regularly since 2003 by the GL operated research platform FINO 1. Thanks to this platform, situated 400 metres away from "alpha ventus", the characteristics of the North Sea winds as well as their energy potentials could be analysed for the first time. Wind speeds of almost 10 metres per second in the annual mean were detected. This result suggests a good site for a wind farm.

This year, the "Hamburg Offshore Wind" took place for the sixth time. Topics of the conference were current offshore projects, their legal and safety relevant principles, and technological concepts such as tripod or jacket foundations as well as grid codes. The corresponding general conditions for the Federal Republic of Germany were improved by a law

from 2006 dedicated to speeding up infrastructure plans. This was the
tenor of a panel discussion attended by top-class representatives from Vattenfall Europe, E.ON Netz and the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety. The law obliges grid operators to connect offshore wind farms to the power grid.

An important result of the conference: In light of the high investment costs for offshore wind farms - they can be ten times higher than those for onshore wind farms - standardised contracts in particular are required in order to give safety to the involved companies. Compared to onshore installations, offshore wind turbines have to meet significantly stricter requirements regarding stability, loadings, reliability and general operating conditions. Therefore and for reasons of economy, it is inevitable to involve a qualified certification body in the respective projects as early as possible.