Flying 56 miles west from this port, you are greeted by a 10-story, yellow, boxlike platform rising out of the North Sea. It is called SylWin1, the connection to Europe’s electric grid from one of the largest power plants ever built offshore. Beyond it, arrayed over 27 square miles of ocean, are the 80 Siemens 3.6-megawatt turbines of the Dan Tysk wind farm.
Turbines are going to grow bigger, to the 6-to-8-MW range, while the transformers that serve them will shrink, saving on production and installation costs. That’s the conclusion of a new study published by Ernst & Young, which finds the European offshore wind market nearing the ability to compete with traditional gas and coal markets if it sheds 26 percent of outlays by 2023.
The report states that the industry can significantly reduce costs over the next five years through a number of key actions. These include deploying larger turbines to increase energy capture (9 percent); fostering competition between industrial players (7 percent); commissioning new projects (7 percent); and tackling challenges in the supply chain such as construction facilities and installation equipment (3 percent).
Before flying out to Dan Tysk, reporters visited Siemens’ pre-assembly site at the port of Esbjerg on Denmark’s north coast. Companies representing at least 80 percent of the Danish wind energy consortium are clustered within 190 miles of the port. They include shipping companies, operations and maintenance service firms, and marine construction experts.
Last year, Siemens, the world leader in offshore wind, shipped more than 300 turbines at this facility. Components like towers and hubs were pre-assembled to prepare them for installation with jack-up vessels.
Siemens has an order backlog of more than 1,100 wind turbines, with four projects sitting on the dock awaiting transport to wind farms in Germany and the United Kingdom.
Perhaps even more bankable is serial production of Siemens’ new 7 MW turbine expected by 2017. According to Hannibal, the new machine would require only a “small improvement” of the existing 6 MW model, but account for 10 percent more output using essentially the same supply chain.
— source eenews.net