E.ON is leading the European offshore business. According to new statistics released by the European Wind Energy Association (EWEA) 118 new offshore wind turbines with a capacity of 333 megawatts, were connected to the grid in the first half of 2010.
A massive 64 percent of all new capacity was developed by E.ON Climate & Renewables, other major developers DONG and Vattenfall were responsible for 21percent and 11 percent respectively.
In the first half of 2010 two of E.ON’s offshore wind farms became fully operational: Robin Rigg, one of the U.K.’s largest offshore wind farms with a total capacity of 180 megawatts, and Alpha Ventus in Germany, the world’s first far shore, deep water wind farm. Last week E.ON also announced that it had completed the erected all 90 turbines at Rödsand II, a 207 megawatts offshore farm between Denmark and Germany in the Baltic Sea.
E.ON is also constructing with partners the London Array, which with capacity of 1 gigawatt when fully completed will be the world’s largest offshore wind farm. Since 2001 E.ON has invested more than €1 billion for offshore projects and will further expand its capacity with a project pipeline of more than 4 gigawatts.
Frank Mastiaux, CEO of E.ON Climate & Renewables said “I’m proud that E.ON is able to make a such a significant contribution to the growth of Europe’s offshore wind sector.We are dedicated to bring in all of E.ON’s technical and financial skills to deliver large scale and high quality projects in what is still a young and extremely challenging offshore business. I think the figures published by EWEA clearly demonstrate our respective commitment.”
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Source: eon, July 21, 2010;