Denmark’s largest offshore wind farm located off the eastern coast of the country near Anholt has been officially opened. Dignitaries in attendance at the event included the Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt, Her Majesty Queen Margrethe II of Denmark, His Royal Highness Prince Henrik Prince Consort of Denmark and Fritz Schur, chairman of the Board of Directors for DONG Energy.
The wind farm consists of 111 Siemens wind turbines, each with a capacity of 3.6MW and a rotor diameter of 120 meters. The Danish company DONG Energy co-owns the project (50 percent) in partnership with two pension companies, Pension Danmark (30 percent) and PKA (20 percent). However DONG will also be responsible for maintenance over a period of five years.
The wind farm’s total generating capacity of 400MW is enough to supply around 400,000 Danish households with clean electricity representing about four percent of Denmark’s overall power demand. The wind farm covers an area of 88 square kilometres in water up to 19 meters deep.
“Despite some challenging weather conditions, we have successfully executed the Anholt offshore wind power project on schedule” said Markus Tacke, CEO of Siemens Wind Power Division. “Implementation of our offshore projects in Europe is running at full speed. So far Siemens has installed more than 3,900MW of offshore wind power capacity. Our projects are reaching the magnitutde of fossil fuel plants and we are making significant progress with efforts to industrialize offshore wind power, thereby further reducing the costs.”
The Anholt wind farm is already the fifth offshore wind power plant to be formally inaugurated within just a few weeks. In July and August the London Array (630MW) and the Greater Gabbard (504MW) officially went online along with the Lincs project (270MW) and Germany’s Riffgat (108MW) wind farm. Siemens is one of the companies currently at the forefront of offshore wind development with a total generating capacity of 3.9GW and current orders for another 5GW. The company has successfully installed nine offshore wind power plants, including that at Anholt, thereby reaching a generation capacity of almost 1.1GW.
The Danish government is aiming to meet 50 percent of the country’s electricity demand through wind power by 2020 and as of 2012 wind has already reached the 30 percent mark. The country’s overall objective is to become totally free of fossil fuels with regard to electrical power generation by 2050.
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