TÜV SÜD presents project certificate for Sandbank offshore wind farm

Certification was awarded in accordance with the standard of the German Maritime and Hydrographic Agency (BSH), and covers supervision and inspection of wind turbine, foundation, sub-station and internal cable manufacturing, transport, installation and commissioning for the wind farm.

The Sandbank offshore wind farm is around 90 kilometres to the west of the island of Sylt, in the North Sea. After DanTysk, it is the second large-scale infrastructure project to have been realised by the project partners under Vattenfall’s management. “The Sandbank project is three months ahead of schedule, not least thanks to the smooth collaboration with TÜV SÜD”, says Philipp Degenhardt, Sandbank’s Team Lead - Project Certification and Interface Management. The last of the total of 72 wind turbines was put into operation at the end of January. The wind farm’s entire power output of 288 MW is fed into the German grid.

During the certification process, the TÜV SÜD experts inspected the foundations, the turbines themselves, the sub-station and the internal cabling, and confirmed their compliance with regulations and standards, reflecting the latest state of the art. “This successful certification is confirmation that the Sandbank wind farm complies with national standards and that the safety of the turbines is guaranteed”, explains Malte Lossin from TÜV SÜD Industrie Service GmbH, the responsible project manager. “The project is an important milestone for the wind power industry and for the expansion of offshore wind power in Germany”, adds Alexander Heitmann, Head of Offshore Wind Services at TÜV SÜD Industrie Service. The power generated by the 72 turbines is enough to supply environmentally friendly ‘green’ energy to around 400,000 German households annually, saving over 700,000 tonnes of carbon emissions compared to conventional power generation. Work on the Sandbank wind farm began in July 2015.