First Power Produced at Giant U.K. Walney Extension Offshore Windfarm

Written by Martin Lynch, European News Editor for Industrial Info (Galway, Ireland)--The first of 87 turbines has been installed and is generating power at the massive 659-megawatt (MW) Walney Extension offshore windfarm, located off the coast of Cumbria, England.

Developer DONG Energy A/S (Fredericia, Denmark) said that the 8-MW V164-8.0 MW turbine from MHI Vestas Wind Systems A/S (OMX:VWS) (Aarhus, Denmark) is the first of 40 being installed by the manufacturer right now, to be followed by 47 additional turbines rated at 7 MW each from newly formed Siemens-Gamesa (Madrid, Spain). The windfarm, when completed, will leapfrog the existing London Array windfarm to become the world's largest operational offshore windfarm. When fully commissioned, it will be capable of generating enough power for roughly half a million homes.

Walney Extension is located in the Irish Sea, approximately 19 kilometres (km) from the Walney Island coast in Cumbria and covers an area of 145 square kilometres (km2). The Vestas portion of the project--Extension III--will be completed in June 2018 with Siemens' Extension IIII due for commissioning a year later in June 2019.

"We are delighted to have passed such an important milestone for the project," said Andrew Cotterell, Walney Extension Programme Director at DONG Energy. "Exporting first power to the grid on schedule is the culmination of extensive onshore and offshore works and is testament to the hard work of everyone involved. In general, construction is progressing well to bring this record-breaking project online."

The news comes during a strong spell for DONG, which earlier this week succeeded in securing a Contract for Difference (CfD) for its 1,400-MW Hornsea 2 offshore wind project as part of U.K. government's latest power auction. The project also set a new record for the lowest-cost offshore project in the U.K., offering a strike price for power generated at a little more than half the strike price agreed by the government for its new nuclear power project at Hinkley Point C. Hornsea 2 was one of three offshore projects to win contracts in the latest government auction with a combined generating capacity of 3.2 gigawatts (GW). For additional information, see September 13, 2017, article - Offshore Wind is Big Winner in U.K. Power Auctions.

Earlier this year, Industrial Info reported that the merger of Spanish renewable energy major Gamesa Corporation Technology S.A. (Zamudio, Spain) and the wind energy business of Germany's Siemens AG (Munich, Germany) created the largest wind turbine company in the world. The combined company has an installed base of 75 GW, an order book of 20.9 billion euro ($22.4 billion) and revenues of 11 billion euro ($11.8 billion). For additional information, see March 20, 2017, article - Europe Clears Way for Siemens-Gamesa Merger.

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