TÜV SÜD wins contract for Danish offshore projects

“These wind-farm projects demonstrate that offshore wind energy is becoming more and more competitive. We are very pleased that we will be able to contribute to this development with our optimised certification procedures”, says Alexander Heitmann, Head of Offshore Wind Energy at TÜV SÜD. The starting signal for the construction of the wind farms will be given in early 2019. A total of 113 wind turbines in the 8-megawatt class will supply a capacity of up to 950 MW; after completion, they will cover the annual electricity demands of roughly 1.3 million Danish households.

Vattenfall has merged several certification modules for all three projects into one process, from foundation design to wind turbines during manufacturing, installation and commissioning.

“At Vattenfall we are working to constantly increase the competitiveness of offshore wind. With this contract we are optimizing the certification process by implementing a risk-based certification approach. We have used our experience from previous projects to merge certification modules of the three physical project sites into one process, thereby achieving significant synergy effects between both the wind farms and the certification modules. TÜV SÜD has proven itself to a reliable partner to us in the past and we look forward to a successful outcome for the current project”, says Philipp Degenhardt, Manager Certification and Interface Management at Vattenfall.

The contract awarded to TÜV SÜD covers certification of the design and manufacturing phases as well as transport, installation and commissioning in line with BEK 73 (Executive Order from the Danish Ministry for Climate, Energy and Buildings No. 73). The relevant project certificates will be issued after successful completion of the respective phases of certification. Within the scope of certification, the wind-energy experts will monitor the construction of the offshore windfarm foundations, towers and wind-energy generators. Design review of the foundations will start as early as summer 2018.

“We are delighted at the prospect of extending our good collaboration with Vattenfall”, emphasises Malte Lossin, Project Manager Offshore Certification at TÜV SÜD. “This continued collaboration is one more proof that TÜV SÜD is an internationally renowned long-term partner for certification, testing and inspection services in the field of onshore and offshore wind energy.” TÜV SÜD's experts will bring their technical experience gathered in the certification of foundations, towers and wind-energy generators to the table, at the same time focusing on the potential areas of synergy arising from parallel work on the three projects.