EWEA - 101 new wind turbines in Europe’s seas since January 2011

Can you imagine something 100 metres tall? That’s the length of one football pitch, four normal public swimming pools, or the height of a basketball hoop from the floor, 33 times over.

That’s how high the offshore wind turbines being installed today are. And Europe is installing more and more of them in its waters – 101 wind turbines were put up and grid connected in the first six months of 2011 alone.

EWEA’s newly released figures show they have a total of 348 MW of wind farm capacity – making a 4.5% increase on the offshore wind turbines put up in the first half of 2010. They are bigger than before, too, at an average 3.4 MW each – up from 2.9 MW last year.

All this new offshore wind power is bringing in money for Europe. Eleven offshore wind farms worth some €8.5 billion and with a total wind energy capacity of 2,844 MW are currently under construction in European waters. Financial institutions will this year provide a record amount of financing to the sector – over €3 billion.

As of 30 June 2011, there are 1,247 offshore wind turbines fully grid connected in Europe. They have a total wind energy capacity of 3,294 MW and are in 49 wind farm plants spread between nine countries.

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Sarah Azau, blog.ewea.org