Europe Sees Strong Offshore Wind Growth

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Written by Martin Lynch, European News Editor for Industrial Info (Galway, Ireland) -- Europe's offshore wind sector continued its rapid rise in 2012 with the installation and grid connection of 293 turbines.

Despite challenging economic and political conditions, the new turbines installed represented a generation capacity of 1,165-megawatts (MW), up 33% on the 874 MW installed in 2011, according to the European Wind Energy Association (EWEA). There were 369 turbines erected during 2012 in total but 76 are awaiting grid connection.

The European total now stands at 1,662 grid-connected turbines, spread across 55 offshore windfarms in 10 European countries. They have a combined generating capacity of 4,995 MW, an increase over 2011's 1,371 turbines which had a total generating capacity of 3,827 MW.

"Offshore wind power is growing solidly", said European Wind Energy Association (EWEA) Policy Director Justin Wilkes. "But solid installation figures do not alter the fact that the wind industry is being hit by political and regulatory instability, the economic crisis, the higher cost of capital and austerity. Europe is a world leader in offshore wind energy and could be creating even more jobs if governments gave greater policy certainty to investors, and resolved grid connection problems."

The U.K. is the runaway leader in new offshore windfarm development. Of the 1,165 MW of new capacity installed in 2012, it accounted for over 73% (854 MW). The second largest amount of installations were in Belgium (185 MW or 16%), followed by Germany (80 MW, 7%) and Denmark (46.8 MW, 4%).

Last year's offshore development represented around €4 billion ($5.4 billion) in investment with prospects for 2013 and 2014 looking positive. There are 14 offshore projects under construction, which will bump up the installed capacity by an additional 3,300 MW, bringing the total offshore capacity in Europe to 8,300 MW.

With regards to turbine manufacturers, Siemens AG's (NYSE:SI) (Munich, Germany) continued to be the top offshore turbine supplier throughout 2012. With 860 MW of new capacity installed, Siemens commanded 74% of the market, followed by REpower (225 MW, 19%) and BARD (80 MW, 7%). Of those that grid connected their turbines, Siemens remained on top with 239 offshore wind turbines connected (82%), all with rated capacities of 3.6 MW. REpower placed second with 30 turbines (13%), split between its 6.15 MW and 5 MW wind turbines and third went to BARD with 16 of its 5 MW wind turbines connected (5%).

On the windfarm developer front, Dong Energy A/S (Fredericia, Denmark) was the largest offshore developer in the 2012 European offshore sector, representing almost a fifth of total installations.

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