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The final wind turbine has been installed at the 913 MW Borkum Riffgrund 3 wind farm, which will be Germany’s largest wind farm to date once commissioned, and the country’s first zero-subsidy offshore array. Plus: Finland wind news.
The Borkum Riffgrund 3 wind project, equally owned by Ørsted and Nuveen Infrastructure, is located 72 km off the coast of Lower Saxony. The project covers an area of around 75 km² and consists of eighty-three 11 MW Siemens Gamesa turbines.
Borkum Riffgrund 3 is the first offshore wind farm in the world to be awarded without subsidies. Ørsted was awarded the contracts in the 2017 and 2018 offshore wind tenders at a price of zero euros feed-in tariff per MWh.
Making the project possible, major industrial and technology firms closed corporate power purchase agreements with the developer for most of its power, including Amazon (350 MW), BASF (186 MW), Covestro (100 MW), Energie-Handels-Gesellschaft/REWE Group (100 MW) and Google (50 MW).
Despite these achievements, Ørsted faces delays in connecting the project to the power grid. European grid operator TenneT has yet to complete the DolWin5 offshore grid connection that will link Borkum Riffgrund 3 to the German grid on land. This is thought to be a knock-on effect of the challenges brought by the COVID-19 pandemic in Singapore, where the DolWin epsilon platform was built. The platform is expected to be installed in autumn this year, with the wind farm’s commercial operation date now planned for 1Q2026.
Finland’s Siikajoki wind farm begins operations
In other news, the 236 MW Siikajoki wind farm, in Northern Ostrobothnia, Finland, has begun commercial operations.
Siikajoki is Suomen Hyotytuuli’s largest wind energy project so far, comprising 38 Vestas V162-6.2 MW wind turbines.
Harri Suutari, Project Director, Suomen Hyotytuuli, said that the project had been delayed by a fire at Hitachi’s Vaasa, Finland transformer factory.
The Siikajoki wind farm will increase Suomen Hyötytuuli’s wind power capacity to 654 MW and annual energy production to over 1.9 TWh, making it Finland’s largest wind power producer. The company accounts for about 30% of the wind power capacity completed last year in Finland and about 8% of the country’s total wind power capacity.
The Siikajoki wind farm in Finland has begun commercial operations
Photo: Suomen Hyötytuuli
