Dong commissions offshore turbine number 1,000
Danish utility Dong Energy has commissioned its offshore wind turbine number 1,000 during the installation of the 252MW Gode Wind 2 project in the German North Sea.
Dong, which has built more than a quarter of the world’s existing offshore wind capacity, had ventured into wind at sea in 1991 with the construction of the 5MW Vindeby array off Denmark that features 11 0.45MW turbines.
The utility this year pioneered again, with the installation of the first of MHI Vestas V164 8MW machines at the 258MW Burbo Bank Extension in UK waters.
"In the space of only a few years, offshore wind has evolved from being a niche technology to being recognised as a reliable and clean energy source supplying power on utility scale and playing an important role in the green transformation of the energy sector,” says senior vice president Anders Lindberg, who is responsible for the construction of offshore wind farms at Dong.
Dong at the end of 2015 had installed offshore wind farms with a combined capacity of 3GW. With several large offshore wind farms under construction in the UK and Germany, Dong said the capacity of offshore arrays in which it has a stake will increase to 6.7GW.