RWE, Northland Power Line Up Dajin Offshore for 1.6 GW German Offshore Wind Project - Offshore WIND
RWE, Northland Power Line Up Dajin Offshore for 1.6 GW German Offshore Wind Project | Offshore Wind
RWE, Northland Power Line Up Dajin Offshore for 1.6 GW German Offshore Wind Project
RWE and Northland Power have picked China-based Dajin Offshore as the preferred foundations supplier for their 1.6 GW Nordseeclusted offshore wind project off the German coast.
Under the agreement, Dajin Offshore will supply the foundations for all 104 offshore wind turbines, subject to the final investment decision for the individual phases of Nordseecluster (A and B).
The Nordseecluster Phase A will comprise two wind farms (N-3.8 and N-3.7) with a combined capacity of 660 MW.
The installation of the foundations for the two wind farms, which are currently in the permit application phase, is expected to start in 2025, with commercial operations starting in early 2027.
Of the 104 foundations in total, 44 are reserved for this initial stage.
Two further wind farms (N-3.6 and N-3.5) of the second phase, Nordseecluster B, will add an additional 900 MW of capacity.
Foundation installation works are scheduled to begin in 2027, with commercial operations planned to start at the beginning of 2029.
For both sites, RWE and Northland Power plan to bid and exercise their step-in rights in the German Government’s offshore wind auctions this year – as they did in 2021 for Nordseecluster A.
“We are excited to have signed the Preferred Supplier Agreement with Dajin as part of our strategy to achieve substantial economies of scale and leverage synergies during the development, construction and subsequent operation of our four wind farm sites”, said Benjamin Miethling, Northland Power’s Managing Director of Nordseecluster.
“We will finalise the main contract over the coming months. We are looking forward to continuing our trustful and productive collaboration with Dajin, the plan being to have the first foundations in the water by 2025.”
The foundations, which will support Vestas 15 MW wind turbines, are planned to be installed by Van Oord’s brand-new offshore installation vessel Boreas, currently being built by Yantai CIMC Raffles Shipyard (YCRO) in China.
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.