E.ON reaches major milestone in North Sea offshore wind power project

After a construction period of one year, E.ON’s Amrumbank West offshore wind power project is taking shape: On Sunday, the first of 80 wind turbines was successfully installed at the construction site, 35 kilometers to the north of the island of Helgoland.

The hub height of the 3.6 megawatt turbine manufactured by Siemens is 90 meters above water level; the rotor diameter is 120 meters. With a height of 150 meters, the rotor tip is nearly as high as the Cathedral of Cologne. Carrier vessels transport the components of 7 wind turbines from the Port of Esbjerg in Denmark to the deep-sea construction site Amrumbank West. To reduce transit times from the base ports of Esbjerg, Helgoland or Cuxhaven to the wind farm, E.ON has chartered a hotel ship. Employees work in shifts of 14 days.

Immediately after the installation of the components, the turbines are prepared for operation. At the same time, commissioning work is being carried out on the transformer substation of the Amrumbank West wind farm. “We are confident that we will soon be able to feed electricity generated by the first turbines into the public grid as planned”, said Dominik Schwegmann, lead project manager of Amrumbank West.

The operation and maintenance of the wind farm will be managed from Helgoland. For this purpose, E.ON has built an operations and maintenance base on the island. Amrumbank West is scheduled to be completed and commissioned in autumn 2015. With a total capacity of 288 megawatts, the wind farm can supply electricity to as many as 300,000 households. This will help to cut over 740,000 tonnes of carbon emissions annually. Capital expenditures on the project will be total about €1 billion.

For more information, please visit : http://www.eon.com