Sandbank Offshore Windfarm Powers Up Three Months Early

Written by Martin Lynch, European News Editor for Industrial Info (Galway, Ireland)--The developers of the Sandbank offshore windfarm in the German North Sea have commissioned the project more than three months ahead of schedule.

The project partners said that the rapid installation of all 72 turbines were down to new installation methods in place on the vessel MPI Adventure combined with favourable weather. The project is owned by Sweden's state-owned utility, Vattenfall AB (Stockholm, Sweden) and Munich's municipal utility Stadtwerke München (SWM) (Munich, Germany).

Sandbank has a total generating capacity of 288 megawatts, enough to power approximately 400,000 German households and offset roughly 700,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions annually. The windfarm uses 72 turbines--Siemens' SWT-4.0-130 models--with a rated capacity of 4 MW each. The windfarm is located 90 kilometres west of the island of Sylt, and the first turbine was put in place last July. With favourable conditions MPI Adventure was capable of installing one turbine per day.

"We delivered Sandbank three and a half months prior to schedule and well within budget," said Gunnar Groebler, Head of Vattenfall Wind. "This is a great success and a proof point that we clearly delivered on our promises made in August 2014. Furthermore, it demonstrates our ability for continuous improvement even whilst constructing our projects."

The windfarm cost 1.2 billion euro ($1.3 billion) to construct and is 51% owned by Vattenfall, while the remainder is held by Stadtwerke München. It is the second project together for the partners, after the 288-MW DanTysk sister project, which is located 70 km west of the island of Sylt and was commissioned in 2015. It boasts 80 turbines from Siemens Energy (NYSE:SI) (Munich, Germany), each with a capacity of 3.6 MW. For additional information, see May 6, 2015, article--Germany's DanTysk Offshore Windfarm Opens.

MPI Managing Director Peter Robinson commented: "This project was delivered with an unprecedented level of cooperation between developer, turbine supplier and turbine installation vessel owners. Both the onshore and offshore teams involved in this sound working relationship can walk away very proud of their efforts."

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