Dong Energy to build world’s largest offshore wind farm in Europe

CleanTechnica

DONG Energy has revealed it will be constructing the 660 MW Walney Extension Offshore Wind Farm, the world’s largest offshore wind farm.

According to the company’s announcement on Wednesday, the 660 MW Walney Extension will make use of two different types of wind turbine: MHI Vestas Offshore Wind will provide 40 8 MW wind turbines, and Siemens (as already reported) will provide 47 7 MW turbines.

“Walney Extension will deliver clean electricity to more than 460,000 UK homes and I’m very pleased that we can now start construction of what will be the world’s biggest offshore wind farm when completed,” said Samuel Leupold, Executive Vice President at DONG Energy. “Building this offshore wind farm will bring us significantly closer to realising our strategy of having 6.5 GW of installed capacity online by 2020.”

The project is expected to be commissioned in 2018, at which point it will surpass the 630 MW London Array Offshore Wind Farm, commissioned in 2014 also by DONG Energy, which is currently the world’s largest offshore wind farm.

The Walney Extension will continue to push the UK’s offshore wind lead, as will other projects in the works, such as the Dogger Bank expansions. The UK is predicted to maintain its dominant position as the world’s leading offshore wind developer well into the mid 2020s, with GlobalData predicting the UK will have an estimated 23.2 GW by 2025, up from a still impressive 4.5 GW in 2014.

“British offshore wind has seen phenomenal growth in recent years,” added Samuel Leupold. “A prerequisite for long term growth in the industry is, that offshore wind eventually can compete on costs with other energy technologies. Building Walney Extension will bring us one step closer to that target, and I’m satisfied to see that we keep bringing costs down, while continuing to expand the UK supply chain.”