Netherlands Largest Near-shore Windfarm Advances

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Written by Martin Lynch, European News Editor for Industrial Info (Galway, Ireland)--The largest near-shore windfarm project in the Netherlands' has advanced with the awarding of final contracts.

The Westermeerwind project, with a generating capacity of 144-megawatts (MW), will be constructed as a turnkey project by German engineering firm, Siemens AG (NYSE:SI) (Munich, Germany). It will be located in the Ijsselmeer lake and feature 48 of the company's SWT-3.0-108 direct drive (D3) wind turbines, each rated at 3 MW. It will be the first wind power plant Siemens Wind Power Offshore unit will build for a client on a turnkey basis. Siemens will also provide maintenance services for the windfarm for a period of 15 years.

The Ijsselmeer lake lies along the northern and western dike of the Dutch municipality of Noordoostpolder (North East Polder). The 48 turbines, each with a 108-meter turbine diameter, will be arranged in three rows in the shallow waters between 500 and 1,100 meters from the dike. Preparation works on site will start in summer 2014, followed by offshore installation in 2015. The lake's shallow waters will allow erection teams to work from special floating barges. According to Siemens the gearless direct-drive wind turbines are more reliable and efficient than conventional turbines as they use half the number of assembled modules in each unit.

Following commissioning between the end of 2015 and early 2016, Westermeerwind will be capable of generating enough electricity for approximately 160,000 Dutch homes. They will also add to the country's goal of generating 14% of its electricity from renewable energy sources by 2020.

Westermeerwind is the near-shore element of a larger onshore wind project, the North East Polder Wind Farm which will be the Netherlands' largest windfarm when it is complete in the coming years. The onshore element will see the erection of 38 Enercon E-126 turbines, each rated at 7.58 MW. The windfarm, including the near-shore Westermeerwind project, will boast 86 turbines in all and will supply enough power for around 400,000 homes. Alone, it will supply around 1.5% of the Netherlands renewable energy goal of 14%.

Renewable energy accounted for just 4% of the total electricity mix in Netherlands in 2010. Wind is the major source and onshore wind is seen as the best method to boost that figure to 14% in the next six years. The government aims to generate 6,000 MW of electricity from onshore wind by 2020.

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