Posted by: JaredFurtado on Oct 12, 2011

By Marios Papalexandrou, Mott MacDonald

Offshore wind is a new market; it has been just two decades since the first commercial installation. The sector was born mainly due to lack of space for the development of large onshore wind projects in the densely populated areas of Western Europe.
The market first evolved in Denmark in 1991 with the construction of the Vindeby offshore wind farm. But real market growth came some 10 years later with construction of Middelgrunden, followed by Horns Rev, which became the largest true offshore project, located some 14-20 km offshore with a total installed capacity of 160 MW.

In addition to Denmark, the U.K., Ireland, Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Japan and China have constructed offshore wind farms over the last decade. Other countries including France, Taiwan, Canada, the U.S., Greece and other European nations are also looking to tap into this resource. The U.K. market began project construction in 2003 and soon took the lion’s share, which it still holds, from Denmark. For the U.K., everything started with Crown Estate’s Round 1 demonstration projects in 13 locations with a total capacity of around 1 GW. Round 1 projects are quite close to shore (less than 10 km) in shallow waters (less than 15 metres), with an average capacity between 60 and 90 MW. Developers at that time were ambitious mid-sized companies, and the largest offshore wind turbine available was 3.6 MW.

Click here to read the full article.



Print
Return