German 332MW offshore wind farm, Nordsee One, entered full commercial operation on 21 December 2017 and its owners – Northland Power (85%), innogy (13.5%) and Enova (1.5%) – are now celebrating the project’s first year of operation.
“I can sum up the first twelve months of operations in three words: produce, preserve and prevent,” said Tim Kittelhake , Managing Director (COO) of Nordsee One GmbH.
Since last December, the wind farm, located approximately 40 km north of the German island of Juist, has produced green electricity to supply the equivalent of approximately 400,000 German households.
“Applying our forward-looking operation and maintenance strategy, the team successfully prevented downtimes, significantly reduced energy losses and maintained high availability of our wind turbines. If the wind was blowing, our 54 turbines were ready to produce green electricity. I am proud of the team not only for working hard but most importantly, for working safely,” Kittelhake said.
All of Nordsee One’s 54 Senvion 6.2M126 turbines have been sending power to the grid since September 2017, after the final turbine was installed .
To date, the wind farm has generated more than 1,000 GWh of green electricity.
Innogy pointed out that, in comparison to the long operational life of an offshore wind farm – with an average 20 to 30 years – the period of energy amortisation is short – statistically less than one year. This means that Nordsee One has now recovered the energy used for production and installation of the different components, as well as the prospective cost of decommissioning and recycling the turbines, the developer states.
The wind farm is operated and serviced from the operation and maintenance base in Norddeich.
“With its proximity to the wind farm and excellent harbor facilities, Norddeich is the ideal base for Nordsee One’s operation and maintenance activities. Further, the travel time to the wind farm is approximately 90 minutes, which is cost-efficient when it comes to managing the logistics around port-based crew transfer vessels,” said Till Frohloff , Site Manager, Operations.