11 MW Siemens Gamesa Wind Turbine: Ørsted's Gode Wind 3 Offshore Wind Farm Supplies First Electricity
Hamburg, Germany - The expansion of offshore wind energy in Germany is picking up speed again, also thanks to increasingly powerful wind turbines. Ørsted has installed what is currently the most powerful wind turbine in the North Sea, and now the first wind power was fed into the transmission grid.
Gode Wind 3 offshore wind farm - Siemens Gamesa's most powerful turbine in operation
Ørsted's Gode Wind 3 offshore wind project continues to take shape with the installation of the first wind turbine. The first 11-megawatt turbine was installed on 23 April 2024 in the construction field, around 32 km off the island of Norderney, by the newly upgraded installation vessel Wind Osprey from Cadeler. Electricity was produced and fed into the transmission grid for the first time on 7 May 2024.
Jörg Kubitza, Managing Director of Ørsted in Germany: "With the first electricity fed into the grid from Gode Wind 3, we are further advancing the transformation in Germany. The project is the energy transition in action, a genuine European cooperation with international suppliers and partners." For Kubitza, however, the future expansion of offshore wind energy in Germany faces major challenges. Kubitza: "Production and port capacities must now be expanded sensibly so that we can achieve the high expansion targets together."
Siemens Gamesa supplies high-performance 11 MW offshore turbines for Gode Wind 3 wind farm
Siemens Gamesa, the wind subsidiary of Siemens Energy AG, is supplying the SG 11.0-200 DD model with a capacity of 11 MW and a rotor diameter of 200 metres. Technically, the turbine is a further development of the patented offshore direct drive technology.
Series production of the SG 11.0-200 DD began in January 2022 with the first delivery from the plant in Cuxhaven in Germany, with the turbines initially being installed for the Hollandse Kust Zuid wind farm in the Netherlands for Vattenfall.
Siemens Gamesa has already announced the series production of the next offshore wind turbine type (SG 14-222 DD) with a capacity of 14 MW for 2024; this turbine can be increased to an output of 15 MW via Power Boost. The SG 14-222 DD model has a rotor diameter of 222 metres, while the SG 14-236 DD model has a diameter of 236 metres.
About the Gode Wind 3 offshore wind farm
According to current plans, Ørsted's Gode Wind 3 offshore wind farm (253 MW) in the North Sea and Iberdrola's Baltic Eagle wind farm in the Baltic Sea (476 MW capacity, 9.5 MW turbines from Vestas) will go into operation in Germany in 2024.
Ørsted won the project rights for the Gode Wind 3 offshore wind farm in the 2017 and 2018 auctions. Planning approval, i.e. the official authorisation from the Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency (BSH), was granted for the project in spring 2021. The final investment decision was then made at the end of 2021. The close proximity to the Gode Wind 1 and 2 wind farms allows Ørsted to utilise synergies in the operation and maintenance of the wind farms.
In December 2023, 50 per cent of the shares in Gode Wind 3 were sold to Nuveen Infrastructure.
Source: IWR Online, 13 May 2024
