First Turbines Up at World's Biggest Offshore Wind Farm
The first two wind turbines have been installed at Dogger Bank A, the first of the three phases of the UK’s 3.6 GW Dogger Bank Wind Farm, the world’s biggest offshore wind farm under construction. According to a Notice of Operations from the project, the first wind turbine was installed on the 29th of August and the second one was in place a few days ago. The work on installing the project’s 95 GE Haliade-X 13 MW wind turbines is being performed by Jan De Nul’s jack-up vessel Voltaire which left the Able Seaton Port with the first batch of components and headed to the offshore site at the beginning of last month. Major offshore construction work, besides the wind turbine installation, continues at the Dogger Bank A site, located 130 kilometres off the east coast of Yorkshire, with the installation of all 95 monopile foundations now completed. The monopiles were installed by the heavy lift vessel Seaway Strashnov, which has now left the site. The crane vessel Jumbo Fairplayer, which was installing transition pieces, has also left the construction site to de-mobilise as the vessel completed its workscope. The work will resume later this month by the crane vessel Alfa Lift. So far, 52 transition pieces have been installed on their respective monopile foundations at Dogger Bank A. The 3.6 GW Dogger Bank Wind Farm is owned by SSE Renewables (40 per cent), Equinor (40 per cent), and Vårgrønn (20 per cent). The first two 1.2 GW phases, Dogger Bank A and Dogger Bank B, will comprise 95 Haliade-X 13 MW turbines each, while Dogger Bank C will feature 87 Haliade-X 14 MW turbines. Once completed in 2026, the project will generate enough electricity to power up to 6 million homes in the UK. The 277-turbine wind farm will generate annual carbon savings equivalent to 1.5 million average petrol cars, according to its developers. ADVERTISE ON OFFSHOREWIND.BIZ Get in front of your target audience in one move! OffshoreWIND.biz is read by thousands of offshore wind professionals daily. Follow offshoreWIND.biz on:
Related Knowledge Center: Offshore wind energy
Over the next decade, U.S. offshore wind power is expected to grow from a single 30-megawatt wind farm off Rhode Island to more than 2,000 MW of capacity along the Atlantic Seaboard. There are contracts for wind power off the coasts of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Maryland, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Virginia.
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory has estimated the United States has over 4,000 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind potential, enough to power the country four times over.
The growth in part being spurred by state solicitations, including in New York, where then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) set a commitment of 9,000 MW of offshore wind by 2035, and in Connecticut, where in June 2021, Gov. Ned Lamont (D) signed legislation authorizing the construction of 2,000 MW of offshore wind by 2030.
The offshore development is also being driven by an investment tax credit set to end in December 2019 and is equal to 12 percent of expenditures. U.S. Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Tom Carper (D-Del.) have introduced a bill to extend the tax credit for up to eight years.
The Interior Department has held eight competitive lease sales that resulted in 15 offshore wind leases over 1.7 million acres that has the potential for 21 GW of capacity. In February 2022, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management completed a bidding process that realized $4.37 billion for 488,000 acres across six lease areas in federal waters off New York and New Jersey.
Projects have also been proposed off the Southeast coast, off California and Hawaii, and for the Great Lakes.