The 450MW Borkum Riffgrund 2 offshore wind farm fed electricity into the German national grid for the first time on Saturday, 4 August, Ørsted said.
All of the wind farm’s 56 MHI Vestas 8MW turbines are expected to be commissioned by the end of the year, according to Ørsted.
Borkum Riffgrund 2 is the first offshore wind farm in Germany to feature 8MW wind turbines and suction bucket foundations.
The power required for the commissioning came from the sister project Borkum Riffgrund 1, which is connected to the Borkum Riffgrund 2 by means of a connecting cable. Thus, the commissioning of the wind turbines can be carried out independently of network operator TenneT, which is completing the grid connection in parallel, the developer said.
The generated electricity is collected at the off-site substation, from where it is then forwarded to TenneT’s high-voltage grid and transported to the Lower Saxon coast.
Recently, the last suction bucket jacket foundations were installed and all the cables in the wind farm were completely laid .
The wind farm’s full commercial launch is planned for 2019. Once fully operational, the wind farm will boost Ørsted’s operating offshore wind capacity in Germany to over 1.3GW.
The wind farm will be managed from Ørsted’s operations & management centre in Norden-Norddeich. In addition to Ørsted, Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP) is equally involved in the project.