Denmark - Rødsand II offshore wind power plant begins operations

One of the world’s largest offshore wind energy plants has begun operations in the Baltic Sea off the coast of Denmark. E.ON opened the Rødsand II wind farm, with 90 Siemens offshore wind turbines with a ceremonial act.

Siemens erected the 90 wind turbines, each with 2.3 megawatt (MW) capacity and a rotor diameter of 93 meters (300 feet), in just 122 days, six weeks ahead of schedule. E.ON will use Rødsand II to supply over 200,000 Danish households with sustainably produced electricity.

Siemens Energy received the order for the construction of Rødsand II from German-based utility E.ON in 2008. This new large-scale wind energy project is located to the south of the island of Lolland in the Baltic Sea, and its installed capacity of 207 megawatts (MW) makes it one of the largest offshore wind farm in the world.

Its predecessor offshore wind project Rødsand I, three kilometers (two miles) to the west, began operations in 2003. It has 72 wind turbines of 2.3 MW each, which were delivered and installed by Siemens for the Danish utility DONG Energy.

“Siemens is the clear No. 1 in the offshore business, and the Rødsand II project is another important milestone for us. In the last 19 years we’ve put up 16 offshore wind parks totaling over 500 wind turbines, all of which are running reliably and successfully,” said Jens-Peter Saul, CEO of the Siemens Wind Power Business Unit. “These 500 offshore wind turbines produce enough environmentally friendly energy to completely supply all the households in a major city like Hamburg.”

As announced by Siemens back in May 2009, the next milestone in the cooperation between E.ON and Siemens will be construction of the London Array wind farm off the coast of Great Britain. This mega-project will be the world’s first gigawatt-class offshore wind power plant. In the first stage, Siemens will supply 175 wind turbines of 3.6 MW each to the London Array owners’ consortium, which includes E.ON, DONG Energy and Masdar Power, a renewable energy project developer.

The London Array wind farm output will be sufficient to power around 750,000 British households with environmentally friendly electricity, or about a quarter of the population of metropolitan London. Wind power is part of Siemens’ Environmental Portfolio. In fiscal 2009, revenue from the Portfolio totaled approximately EUR23 billion, making Siemens the world’s largest supplier of environmentally friendly technologies.

In the same period, the company’s products and solutions enabled customers to reduce their CO2 emissions by 210 million tons. This amount equals the combined annual CO2 emissions of New York, Tokyo, London and Berlin.

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