Work Starts on Arkona Baltic Sea Offshore Windfarm

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Written by Martin Lynch, European News Editor for Industrial Info (Galway, Ireland)--German energy major E.ON AG (FWB:EOAN) (Düsseldorf, Germany) has announced the start of construction on its 384-megawatt Arkona offshore windfarm in the Baltic Sea.

The windfarm, located 35 kilometres (km) northeast of the island of Rügen, will be notable for E.ON's claim to being the first company to use "a special anti-corrosion coating" that will prevent hundreds of tonnes of corroded metal polluting the sea over Arkona's 25-year lifespan. The windfarm will cost 1.2 billion euro ($1.4 billion) to complete.

The first foundations have been successfully laid in the seabed. There will be 60 monopiles in total, measuring 81 metres tall with a diameter of up to almost eight metres, which will be followed by the mounting of transition pieces, towers and turbines. Each of the steel tubes weighs around 1,200 tonnes, installed at depths of 23 to 37 metres. The project will use 60 six-megawatt turbines from Siemens AG (NYSE:SI) (Munich, Germany). When completed in late 2019, the windfarm will be capable of supplying power to roughly 400,000 households.

E.ON has developed the Thermal Spray Aluminium (TSA) process for coating of the monopiles with engineers Rambøll Germany. With partners, the company funded the expansion of coating halls in Rostock and the creation of what it called "the world's first fully automated coating line".

During the coating process, a robot with two arc burners sprays a 350 μm thick layer of molten aluminium onto the foundations, after which the surface is then sealed with resin. The TSA process is more generally used as corrosion protection for smaller steel components under water or for larger components above water, like offshore substations. At Arkona, it is the first time that corrosion protection has been used on an industrial scale for windfarm construction. The company maintains that this alternative coating method can "lead to significant cost savings compared with conventional corrosion protection."

"The guiding principle behind all E.ON activities is to improve people's lives and environmental and climate protection play a central role as part of this," explained Sven Utermöhlen, chief operating officer of E.ON Climate & Renewables. "E.ON has again proved its innovative capability with the TSA procedure. We will now analyse and further optimise the process in order to use it for future offshore wind projects."

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