Offshore wind power installations stabilise in 2014

In 2014, the UK accounted for over half of all new installations (54.8%) with Germany in second (35.7 %) and Belgium (9.5 %) making up the rest.

For 2015, Germany is expected to install more offshore capacity than the UK, which has dominated installations in Europe for the past three years.

Wilkes says: “Germany is set to buck the trend this year. The UK has more installed offshore capacity than the rest of the world combined but this year shows that other countries in the EU are making serious investments in the sector. The nine financial deals closed in 2014, of which 4 were “billion-Euro” projects, suggest that activity will pick up substantially as of 2017 as these projects begin to hit the water.” Once completed, the 12 European offshore projects currently under construction will increase installed capacity by a further 2.9 GW, bringing the cumulative capacity in Europe to 10.9 GW.

Looking on the technology, 78.8 % of substructures are monopiles, 10.4 % are gravity foundations, jackets account for 4.7 %, tripods account for 4.1 %, and tripiles account for 1.9 %. Furthermore, there are also two full-scale grid-connected floating turbines swimming in European waters. The average offshore wind turbine size was 3.7 MW, slightly less than in 2013 due to the increased proportion of installation of the Siemens 3.6 MW wind turbines. The average water depth of wind farms completed, or partially completed, in 2014 was 22.4 m and the average distance to shore was 32.9 km.

408 new offshore wind turbines in nine wind farms and one demonstration project were fully grid connected between 1 January and 31 December 2014.

The new capacity totals 1,483.3 MW – 5.34 % less than in 2013. 536 wind turbines were installed during 2014, an average of 5.9 MW per day. 373 of these turbines are still awaiting grid connection. On 12 projects work is on-going.