The world’s biggest in-development wind power complex, the 3.6GW Dogger Bank project off the UK, will be built with upscaled 13MW Haliade-X turbines from GE Renewable Energy, confirming long-held industry speculation that the OEM’s top-of-the-line design would come to market beefed-up from its original nameplate rating.

A total of 190 of the machines – the launch of which in 2018 was covered exclusively by Recharge – will be delivered for the Equinor-SSE Renewables development’s ‘A’ and ‘B’ phases, off the back of extensive testing of a 12MW prototype of the design in the Port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands.

“At GE, innovation is in our DNA, and that is why we continue to innovate, enhance and develop the Haliade-X platform to meet market demands to deliver offshore wind as a competitive and affordable source of renewable energy,” said John Lavelle, CEO of GE Renewable Energy’s offshore wind business unit.

“In signing these agreements with Dogger Bank, our Haliade-X technology will now have an important role to play in the UK’s offshore wind ambitions [of 40GW by 2030] and greenhouse emission reduction to net-zero by 2050.”

The componentry for the order for Dogger Bank, part of a complex that could ultimately be expanded into a 9GW plant, will be manufactured at GE’s Saint-Nazaire and Cherbourg factories in France, with construction team operations marshalled out of the Able Seaton Port in Hartlepool, near Newcastle, and some 120 local service jobs created for the project.

UK energy minister Kwasi Kwarteng he was “thrilled to see so many green jobs on the way to the northeast of England” after the economic downturn sparked by the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Projects like Dogger Bank are absolutely crucial to building back greener from the coronavirus pandemic – creating jobs, growing the economy and tackling climate change. I look forward to watching its progress in the months and years ahead,” he said.

Halfdan Brustad, vice president for Dogger Bank at Equinor, said: “The sheer scale of Dogger Bank brings huge opportunities to the UK. As well as being home to the world’s largest offshore wind farm, the northeast will benefit from hundreds of jobs and local supply chain opportunities.

“We look forward to working with our partners and suppliers to build up a skilled team in the area, to operate and maintain these turbines for the lifetime of the wind farm from our new base, which will be constructed at the Port of Tyne.”

SSE Renewables Dogger Bank’s project director Steve Wilson said: “These turbines are a true testament of how hard the offshore wind industry is working to continually innovate and drive down costs and we look forward to working with GE Renewable Energy.”

Peter Stephenson, Able UK’s executive chairman, said his company’s contract for Dogger Bank was “a massive vote of confidence” and meant “sustained investment [to] provide a bespoke and tailor-made solution” for the wind farm.

“Combine [the UK’s ‘sector deal’ and targets for offshore wind build-out] with the sector’s extraordinary efforts in terms of developing new products and significantly reducing costs [and] this industry is set to become a dominant factor in a post Covid-19 UK economy.”

Flying a 220-metre-diamter rotor, the Haliade-X held the record for the largest offshore wind turbine for several years, before being supplanted recently by rival Siemens Gamesa’s 15MW design, the SG14.0-222DD, an ‘uptuneable’ 14MW platform, which is expected to be ready for market by 2024.

The Rotterdam prototype – which was erected in November 2019 and recently secured its provisional type certificate from DNV-GL, a key step in the technology’s progress toward being market-ready – will be geared up to run at 13MW “in the coming months” as part of its ongoing testing and certification process.

Prototypes of the machine’s supersize 107-metre-long blade and nacelle continue to undergo a battery of tests at the UK’s Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult testing facility in Blyth, England, and at Boston’s Wind Technology Testing Center in the US.

Financial close on Dogger Bank A and Dogger Bank B is expected in late 2020. The £9bn ($11bn) wind power project, located in 20-35 metres of water over 130km off the northeast coast of England, will be capable of powering up to 4.5 million homes each year once online in 2026.

Along with Dogger Bank, GE has been selected as preferred supplier to deliver Haliade-Xs for Danish developer Orsted’s 120MW Skipjack and 1.1GW Ocean Wind projects in the US Atlantic, and is also building a factory in Jieyang, in China’s Guangdong province, as a base to supply the Asian offshore wind market.

Wind

World's biggest offshore wind farm to feature upscaled 13MW GE Haliade-Xs