Giant East Anglia offshore wind farm installs high-tech weathervane
Thứ hai, 26/08/2013 - 09:27
Offshore wind developers continue to award UK contracts as RES Offshore bags deal for West of Duddon Sands wind farm
Offshore wind developers continue to award UK contracts as RES Offshore bags deal for West of Duddon Sands wind farm
There's no point building a wind farm if you don't know which way the wind is blowing, and today two offshore wind farm developers announced their projects have moved forward in that vein, installing weather monitoring stations on site.
Vattenfall and ScottishPower Renewables confirmed two meteorological masts have now been installed at the site of its East Anglia offshore wind farm, which once complete is expected to have a capacity of 7.2GW.
The met masts were installed under £17m worth of contracts by Scottish companies Wood Group and Steel Engineering, and will start collecting data from the start of September to help inform the layout of the project.
Given the scale of the project, Vattenfall and ScottishPower Renewables are developing East Anglia in phases. The first phase already has a grid connection agreement for 1.2GW and is expected to start offshore construction in 2017.
Andy Paine, East Anglia programme director, said the contracts highlighted the extent to which UK companies are benefiting from the growth of offshore wind power in the UK.
"We have been developing our plans for East Anglia Offshore Wind Zone for more than two years," he said in a statement. "In this time we have awarded more than £50m worth of contracts to UK businesses and have supported hundreds of jobs - so it is a great achievement to now see the first physical structures being installed offshore."
Meanwhile, ScottishPower Renewables and DONG Energy have hired RES Offshore to design a power performance met mast for its 389MW West of Duddon Sands Offshore Wind Farm, which is currently being constructed in the Irish Sea.
RES said it had already subcontracted Scotland's Burntisland Fabrications to build the met mast's monopile, transition piece and platform and Denmark's Carl to design and supply the steel lattice tower.
West of Duddon Sands is expected to be completed early next year, after which the monitoring system will be used to ensure the wind farms deliver their promised annual energy production under the power curve warranty.
In related news, new figures from Bloomberg suggest some of the world's leading wind turbine manufacturers are expected to return to profitability this year, following years of turbulence that saw them close factories and lay off hundreds of employees.
Bloomberg predicted Vestas and Nordex will have their first pretax profits this year since 2010, while Gamesa will make a net profit following a loss last year.
By Le My