Vattenfall, one of the leading energy companies in Europe, together with Munich City Utilities, revealed their plans to construct a $1.6 billion wind farm. The Swedish giant will place 72 turbines off the German coast of the North Sea in close proximity to Danish waters.
Construction is planned to begin in 2015. If everything goes to plan, in less than 2 years, the giant wind farm will be supplying electricity to the German national grid. The wind farm is expected to have 834 megawatts of installed capacity, which should be sufficient to generate enough electricity to power around 400,000 households.
The wind farm will be the second one of its kind owned by both Vattenfall and the City of Munich, although the Swedish energy group has already established itself as one of the game-changers in the world’s renewable energy sector. Alongside the DanTysk, the first joint venture between the two partners that is made up of 80 wind turbines and is due to start generating electricity in the coming year, Vattenfall runs another 900 turbines across Northern Europe and Britain. Their nine offshore wind farms generate green energy that totals up to 4 TW hours, which can power more than a million homes.
The new wind farm called Sandbank is expected to have a total of 72 Siemens SWT-4.0-130 wind turbines, each having a capacity of 4MW. Vattenfall will own 51% of the farm, which will contribute towards reaching the company’s goal to continue expanding in the field of renewable energy.
Quite interesting is the involvement of the other partner within the project, the City of Munich. This is their first investment after Germany introduced a new law on renewables earlier this month, which reduces the state aid that goes towards offshore wind farms. The investment is part of their SWM Renewable Energy Campaign, which has the great goal to turn Munich into the first city on the world with more than a million citizens, whose electricity is entirely provided by renewable sources by 2025.
Image (c) AFP
