Thor OWF Wind and Metocean Campaign Completed

Akrocean has completed a one-year wind and meteorological and oceanographic (metocean) campaign for the Thor offshore wind farm in Denmark.

The company retrieved its floating LiDAR from the project site in the Danish part of the North Sea earlier this summer and delivered wind and metocean data to the Danish transmission system operator (TSO) Energinet.

Energinet, which contracted Akrocean to carry out the campaign last year, is providing the collected data to the bidders in the tender for the Thor project.

The Danish Energy Agency (DEA) pre-qualified six consortia and companies to participate in the tender for the Thor offshore wind farm at the beginning of this year: Ørsted, Vattenfall, a consortium of Total and Iberdrola, Thor Wind Farm (owned by RWE), a joint venture of SSE Renewables and Thor OFW (owned by Copenhagen Infrastructure IV Thor OFW ApS and Andel Holding), and Swan Wind (a joint venture between Eneco Wind and European Energy).

The shortlisted developers had until mid-March to submit their preliminary bids. The call for final bids was then issued in August and remains open until November, with the tender winner expected to be announced in early December of this year.

Located at a distance of a minimum of 20 kilometres from the shore, Thor will have a capacity of between 800 MW and 1,000 MW.

Denmark plans to have the grid connection for the Thor offshore wind farm ready by 1 January 2025, and the offshore wind farm must be fully built and connected to the grid by 31 December 2027.

Based on the Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) of the Plan for the Thor offshore wind project and the public consultation, the DEA concluded earlier this year that the project can be realised at the dedicated site west of Thorsminde without significant impacts to the environment. The agency has also narrowed down the site for the wind farm from 440 square kilometres to 286 square kilometres as a result of the site investigations.