Welsh Offshore Windfarm Takes Shape

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Written by Martin Lynch, European News Editor for Industrial Info (Galway, Ireland) -- The U.K. is on its way to getting another giant offshore windfarm up and running as the first turbine foundations have been installed at the Gwynt y Môr project, off the north coast of Wales.

The first of 160 steel foundations at the proposed windfarm was successfully put in place by the floating vessel Stanislav Yudin At 576-megawatts (MW), Gwynt y Môr is one of the largest offshore windfarms currently under construction in Europe. The windfarm will take two years to construct and when commissioned, will be capable of generating enough power for approximately 400,000 homes - a third of the all the homes in Wales. The project will cost an estimated €2 billion ($2.5 billion).

It is being developed by RWE npower renewables, the U.K. renewables arm of German energy giant RWE AG (OTC:RWEOY) (Essen), and partners Stadtwerke Munchen (Munchen, Germany) and Siemens Energy (Erlangen, Germany), which is part of electrical and electronic equipment major Siemens AG (NYSE:SI) (Munich, Germany).

"The first foundation was installed using the heavy lift vessel Stanislav Yudin, in the early hours of Wednesday morning, August 8, and to the specified depth of 23.2 metres," explained RWE npower renewables' Gwynt y Môr Project Director, Toby Edmonds. "We are delighted with this very successful first installation, which marks a next crucial stage of the two year construction period of this flagship wind farm, which began with the installation of scour protection in January. Gwynt y Môr has already enabled over £310million of investments into the Welsh and U.K. supply chain, and its full operation at the end of 2014 will see the delivery of a further significant community benefit fund into the local area of £19 million, to be paid over the lifetime of the project."

Each turbine foundation at Gwynt y Môr consists of a steel monopile, between 60 - 70 metres long and 6-7 metres wide, a yellow transition piece and access platform.

Following the turbine foundation being placed, the first of two offshore substations set sail for Liverpool Bay, having been designed and built by Siemens in Manchester and Harland and Wolff in Belfast. The first export cable, which will transport power from the offshore substations to shore, is currently being laid near Pensarn.

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