Wind power on lakes is a little-discussed but growing offshore energy niche with similar strong winds to at-sea projects, but with lower construction costs and arguably greater short-term potential than floating wind.
The Dutch pioneered in this field in 1997, by placing a first 28 turbines in the Ijsselmeer artificial lake that form the 16.8MW Irene Vorrink wind farm near the town of Lelystad.
But lake-based offshore wind then became somewhat of a Sleeping Beauty, only to be awoken again in 2010, when a 30MW wind farm was installed on Sweden’s giant Lake Vänern (see panel below), and again in 2016, when a second project started feeding power from the Ijsselmeer, the 144MW Westermeerwind array.
