Ørsted has named Siemens Gamesa as the preferred turbine supplier for two offshore wind power projects in the German North Sea totalling more than 1.1 gigawatts in capacity.
The award concerns the 242-megawatt (MW) Gode Wind 3 site and the 900-MW Borkum Riffgrund 3, which will be the biggest offshore wind power plant yet in German waters.
If the final investment decision comes through, Siemens Gamesa will deploy its new SG 11.0-200 DD offshore wind turbine at the sites, which have a capacity of 11 MW and a 200-metre rotor diameter with each blade measuring 97 metres in length. ‘The increasingly larger turbines and projects have been key drivers in making offshore wind cheaper than newly-built, fossil-based power generation,’ comments Martin Neubert, Executive Vice President and CEO of Ørsted Offshore.
The award is subject to the projects receiving final grid dates and final consents from German authorities.
The final number of turbines for both projects remains to be determined. Ørsted expects the installation of Gode Wind 3 to begin in 2023, with commissioning being completed in 2024. The installation of Borkum Riffgrund 3 is expected to begin 2024, with commissioning being completed in 2025.
A total of 1.2 million German households will be served by the projects once online resulting in annual savings of 3.7 million tons of CO2 emissions compared to traditional power generation.
This article first appeared on Project Cargo Journal, a sister publication of SWZ|Maritime.
