Dutch railway company NS has received the first power from the new wind farm in the Dutch North Sea, Eneco Luchterduinen. With the last of a total of 43 turbines installed this month, almost the entire park has been feeding electricity to the grid.
As of 2018, NS will get 100 GWh of electricity from Luchterduinen, which is approximately 20% of the total wind farm.
The first electricity from the wind farm was delivered a few weeks ago. In 2014, NS and all other railway operators signed a contract with Eneco to supply a total of 1.4 TWh per year in green power. This is comparable to the power used by all the residents of Amsterdam.
Thanks to the contract with Eneco, the entire electric train traffic in the Netherlands has been partially running on green (wind) power since January 1. From 2018, this will go to 100%.
Luchterduinen is the first new offshore wind farm in the Netherlands which supplies the railway. As of 2018, approximately half of the electricity for the railway will come from the Netherlands. The other half will come from the Scandinavian countries and Belgium.