Germany's first commercial offshore wind farm BARD Offshore 1 is located in the North Sea, about 90 kilometres northwest of the island of Borkum. The project consists of 80 BARD 5.0 MW turbines. The project owner is BARD (92.5%) and Enovos (7.5%). BARD is owned by HypoVereinsbank (HVB), part of UniCredit. The foundation type is tripile supplied by Cuxhaven Steel Construction. The estimated annual electric power output can meet the needs of 223,660 households in the region.
On January 19, 2012, it was announced that Bard Offshore 1 wind farm in the German North Sea was set to cost Eur2.9 billion (USD3.7 billion), more than a billion euros in excess of the originally planned cost. The cost increase is linked to delays of more than two years caused by technical problems. The wind farm’s construction began in 2009 and was completed in July 2013.
To make matters worse, power export from the project has been halted from October 2013 to January 2014 due to problems on the ABB-built BorWin1 HVDC transmission platform which connects the wind farm to the mainland substations.
The project then “faced technical problems in restarting the engines” after a three-month standstill in a winter environment. “Access to the turbines was restricted in light of wave heights prohibiting safe operations,” a spokesman said.
In the following weeks in January and February 2014, Bard experienced repeated and unplanned interruptions of grid availability. “The precise technical reasons were not disclosed,” he said.
These problems have hit the reputation of Germany’s infant offshore wind industry.
No comments:
Post a Comment