EU Alternative Clean Energy - Windpower: Europe adds 2.6 GW of offshore wind in 2018

Irish Windpark

The European offshore wind industry added 2,649 MW of net capacity in 2018, the bulk of which in the UK and Germany, but saw installations drop 15.8% from the record 2017, show statistics by WindEurope, released today.

The capacity additions bring Europe’s total offshore wind capacity to 18,499 MW, coming from 105 plants in 11 countries. A total of 409 wind turbines across 18 wind farms started generating power in 2018. Most of the machines were installed in the UK and Germany -- 1,312 MW and 969 MW, respectively. The two countries accounted for 85% of Europe’s fresh offshore wind capacity and were followed by Belgium with 309 MW and Denmark with 61 MW.

“The technology keeps developing. The turbines keep getting bigger. And the costs keep falling. It’s now no more expensive to build offshore wind than it is to build coal or gas plants,” WindEurope’s CEO Giles Dickson said.

In the past year, EUR 10.3 billion (USD 11.7bn) of projects, representing 4.2 GW of capacity, reached final investment decisions (FIDs). The investment amount is 37% higher in annual terms compared to 2017, while the capacity covered rose by 91% due to the quickly falling costs. This amount has supported the 4.2 GW of projects, that are expected to come online in the next couple of years.

A Danish offshore Windpark

WindEurope highlighted in the statistics that turbines and wind farms are getting larger, with the average turbine size reaching 6.8 MW last year, or 15% greater than it was in 2017. The biggest offshore wind turbine, MHI Vestas Offshore Wind's machine with a capacity of 8.8 MW, was switched on at the 657-MW Walney 3 Extension offshore wind farm in the UK. In terms of manufacturers, Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy (BME:SGRE) and MHI Vestas were responsible for 95% of all connected turbines in 2018, with shares of 62% and 33% respectively.

According to WindEurope’s data, six offshore wind parks are currently being built in Europe, among which is the 1,218-MW Hornsea 1 in the North Sea, the first offshore complex globally with a capacity exceeding 1 GW.

WindEurope’s CEO pointed out that more governments are “recognising the merits of offshore wind,” giving Poland as an example and its plans to add 10 GW by 2040, while there are still some that are not taking advantage of offshore wind’s potential, including Sweden and France.

Read more: Europe adds 2.6 GW of offshore wind in 2018

The Netherlands: Microsoft Signs New PPA for Wind Farm Electricity in the Netherlands - by Alyssa Danigelis

Microsoft signed a PPA with the Swedish state-owned energy company Vattenfall to purchase all the electricity produced from a new 180-megawatt wind farm being built in the Netherlands, according to an announcement this week. The farm will be located in the Wieringermeer polder, near Amsterdam, next to Microsoft’s data center operations.

The 10-year deal, one of the largest wind PPAs in the Netherlands, is Vattenfall’s first with a data center outside Nordic countries. Nuon, part of Vattenfall, will be responsible for constructing and operating the wind farm. Eventually the company plans to expand the project to include 100 windmills, according to Microsoft. “That will allow the production of approximately 1.3 billion kilowatt hours of renewable electricity,” the announcement says.

The tech giant’s data center operations in the Netherlands are a regional hub for Microsoft Cloud service customers in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and beyond. Vattenfall and Microsoft already had a partnership prior to the PPA — the energy company uses Microsoft’s cloud-based tools for its business operations including the enterprise platform Azure for analytics.

Lately Microsoft has been on a roll with renewable energy. Last month the company signed a deal for 100% of the energy produced by GE’s new 37-megawatt wind farm in Ireland. Recently Microsoft opened a pilot for a data center in Seattle that uses integrated fuel cells and natural gas rather than power from the electrical grid. The company’s Cloud Infrastructure and Operations team hopes the fuel cells can one day work with renewable biogas instead.

The Wieringermeer site currently has 93 turbines that are set to be replaced with more powerful machines, Wind Power Monthly reported. “Combined with an adjacent extension the project’s additional capacity of 115 MW, Wieringermeer will have 100 turbines in total with a total capacity of 295 MW when completed,” reporter Craig Richard wrote. “Vattenfall will own 82 of these turbines, the nearby Energy Research Center of the Netherlands will own 17, and the remaining turbine will be reserved for local residents, the developer said.”

Construction on Vattenfall’s new wind farm is planned to start next year. The partners expect additional generation capacity to become available in 2020. Once the project is completed, it will likely be one of the largest wind farms in the Netherlands.

Read more: Microsoft Signs New PPA for Wind Farm Electricity in the Netherlands - Energy Manager Today

Germany: Alternative Energy - Windpower: Siemens Wins Orders for Five Onshore Projects in Northern Germany

Direct-drive wind turbines from Siemens are gaining ground on the German market: Siemens has now received five orders for 23 of these state-of-the-art wind turbines. Two of the wind farms are situated in Germany's northernmost state of Schleswig- Holstein, while the other three are to be erected in Lower Saxony. Installation of all five projects, comprising anywhere from one to eight of these gearless units each, is to be completed by the spring of 2017.

The first Siemens model SWT-3.3-130 wind turbine to be installed in Germany is to be erected in Schleswig-Holstein by the end of this year in the municipality of Südermarsch near the town of Husum. This unit that Siemens is installing for Südermarsch Wind GmbH & Co. has an 85-meter hub height on a steel tower and a rotor diameter of 130 meters designed to operate in moderate wind speeds and deliver a rated electrical generating capacity of 3.3 megawatts (MW). Six other wind turbines of this model make up the Damme Wind Farm project being erected near the city of the same name in Lower Saxony. Owing to the wind conditions at this site, however, Siemens will install the units on steel tube towers with a hub height of 135 meters. Both projects are scheduled to go on line by the end of this year.

The five model SWT-3.0-113 wind turbines that Siemens is currently installing on steel towers for the Beedenbostel Wind Farm near the town of Celle in Lower Saxony have a hub height of 115 meters. These 3-MW-Class units with rotors measuring 113 meters in diameter are replacing five older turbines at the farm as part of a repowering project. The five new wind turbines are to take up operation in early 2017. The operator is the Dean Group headquartered in the town of Neustadt am Rübenberge.

Siemens is delivering eight more wind turbines of the same model to its customers innoVent and Jade Concept for the Bollenhagen Wind Farm in the Wesermarsch marshlands near the city of Oldenburg. The hub height of these units is 92.5 meters. Planning calls for this 24-MW wind park to begin commercial operation already by the beginning of 2017. While the wind turbines Siemens is supplying its customer Denker & Wulf AG are of equal hub height, they are model SWT-3.2-113 units destined for the Quarnbek Wind Farm project. This trio of wind turbines, delivering a total output of 9.6 MW, is currently being installed in the community of the same name on the A210 Autobahn between Rendsburg and Kiel. Working in close cooperation with the developer, the project team accelerated construction times so that commissioning can take place before the end of this year.


Read more: Siemens Wins Orders for Five Onshore Projects in Northern Germany

Alternative Energy: U.K. Green Investment Bank Raises 476 Million Euro's for Wind - by Alex Morales

The U.K. Green Investment Bank raised 475 million Euro's ($541 million) for its offshore-wind fund as it seeks to spur development of a technology in which Britain already leads the world.

AMF Pensionsforsakring AB and Strathclyde Pension Fund were among investors in the second round of fundraising, bringing the total cash to 818 million pounds, the GIB said Tuesday in a statement. The bank announced the fund in June 2014 and is seeking to raise 1 billion pounds from several rounds.

The fundraising “highlights the growing confidence that home-grown and international investors have in well-developed and well-managed offshore wind assets,” said Karl Smith, fund managing director at the bank. “We are in advanced discussions with other potential investors and progressing quickly towards final close and reaching our 1 billion-pound target.”

Britain already has more offshore wind power than the rest of the world put together, with 4,494 megawatts of installed capacity at the end of 2014. The GIB’s fund will buy into projects, freeing up cash for developers such as Dong Energy A/S to spend on new wind parks.

The fund also acquired the bank’s right to a 10 percent stake in RWE AG’s operating 576-megawatt Gwynt y Mor wind farm off north Wales, according to the statement. It already has a 24.95 percent stake in RWE’s 90-megawatt Rhyl Flats farm, also off north Wales, and a 20 percent interest in Statkraft AS’s 317-megawatt Sheringham Shoal farm off eastern England.

Read more: U.K. Green Investment Bank Raises 475 Million Euro's  for Wind - Bloomberg Business