Ørsted realised the largest offshore project to date initiated by PNE AG

The Borkum Riffgrund 2 offshore wind farm has officially gone into operation. This was announced by the Danish energy group Ørsted last Tuesday in Hamburg. The news also brought great joy to the Cuxhaven-based PNE Group, which initiated the project and sold it to DONG Energy (later Ørsted) in 2009. After Borkum Riffgrund 1 and Gode Wind 1 and 2, Borkum Riffgrund 2 is the fourth Ørsted project in the North Sea, for which PNE has laid the foundations for approval. Borkum Riffgrund 1 has been in operation since 2015, Gode Wind 1 and 2 have been feeding electricity into the grid since August 2017. With a total installed capacity of 1.3 gigawatts, around 1.4 million households in Germany can be supplied with green electricity.

The project idea for offshore wind farms originated in 1999 and led to a first approval of Borkum Riffgrund 1 in 2004. Further approvals followed in 2006, 2009 and 2011. PNE has laid the foundation for this through many years of environmental studies. This included the monitoring of fish, the benthos, resting and migratory birds as well as marine mammals. In addition, extensive technical preparatory work was carried out, such as the evaluation of wind and sea state data or soil investigations. In detail, these were geophysical surveys (side scan sonar, magnetometer, seismics), bathymetric and geotechnical investigations (cone penetration testing and drilling). PNE has also advanced the licensing procedures for many years.

Borkum Riffgrund 2, located around 54 km off the German coast, with a total of 56 turbines and a rated output of 450 megawatts, is the largest offshore project Ørsted has ever completed in the German Bight. The Cuxhaven PNE Group developed the project first on its own and later in the form of a joint venture together with Ørsted (formerly DONG Energy). Even after the complete sale of the project to DONG Energy in 2009, PNE AG remained active as a service provider up to the construction phase. The Borkum Riffgrund 2 project comprises 8 MW MHI Vestas turbines with a rotor diameter of 164 metres, which are the largest turbines ever installed in the German North Sea. Around one third of the turbines were based on suction bucket jackets. These are innovative foundation structures, which can be placed on the seabed by suction. The project will supply electricity for approx. 460,000 households.

Approval documents for Riffgrund 2 (Image: PNE)

"We congratulate Ørsted on this great success. This is an important contribution to the successful energy transition, which is a matter close to our hearts as a solution provider for clean energy," says Markus Lesser, CEO of PNE AG. "In addition, we are proud and grateful that we were able to play a key role in these projects with a total investment volume of more than euro 5 billion," continued Lesser.

Thorsten Fastenau, Head of Wind Offshore at PNE AG, added: "We would like to express our special thanks for the always very good and trusting collaboration, which began in 2003 and continues today. We are looking forward to implementing further successful projects together with Ørsted."