First Turbine Up at 400-Megawatt Rampion Offshore Windfarm

Written by Martin Lynch, European News Editor for Industrial Info (Galway, Ireland)--The first of 116 turbines has been installed at the Rampion offshore windfarm off the Sussex coast in England.

Developer E.ON (XETRA:EOAN) (Düsseldorf, Germany) announced that the first batch of turbines is being installed by the MPI Discovery jack-up vessel, which is capable of transporting the components for eight turbines in each trip from the manufacturing site in Esbjerg in Denmark to the Rampion site in the English Channel. Weather permitting, each turbine takes about 24 hours to install from initial positioning.

"For the installation, each tower with a length of 80 metres, weighing approximately 200 tonnes, is positioned and bolted onto each turbine foundation," EDF stated. "Next the nacelle, which houses the generator and gearbox, is fitted onto the tower, and finally the three blades, each measuring 55 metres in length."

Rampion will have a total generating capacity of 400 megawatts (MW) when commissioned in June 2018 and will be capable of powering approximately 300,000 homes. The project will cost £1.6 billion ($2 billion). E.ON decided to forge ahead with the project in mid-2015, after the U.K's Green Investment Bank paid £236 million ($292 million) for a stake in the project. Since then, it has boosted its total investment to £306 million ($377 million) to increase its stake to 25%. Last November, Canadian energy company Enbridge Incorporated (NYSE:ENB) (Calgary, Alberta) joined the Rampion project by acquiring a 24.9% interest. For additional information, see May 21, 2015, article--E.ON to Build Rampion Offshore Windfarm in U.K..

"After seven years of planning, development and initial construction, we are especially proud to have reached this major milestone, which will see the Rampion project really begin to take shape," Chris Tomlinson, development and stakeholder manager for the Rampion Offshore Windfarm, told media. "The first turbine is a powerful symbol of the engineering achievement that Rampion and other offshore windfarms represent. Since we completed the foundation installation in November, our multi-skilled teams have continued to install the onshore and offshore electrical infrastructure, and have made final preparations for the turbine construction. Over the coming months, the 116 turbines will gradually be installed as we work towards the first generation of electricity later in the year."

The project will use 116 V112-3.45-MW wind turbines from MHI Vestas Wind Systems A/S (OMX:VWS) (Aarhus, Denmark), spread across a 72-square-kilometre zone.

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