Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

WIND

Swedish wind turbines to power UK households

State-owned Swedish energy giant Vattenfall has announced plans to build two new wind turbine parks in the UK, with enough installed capacity to light up 162,000 British homes.

Published: 11 July 2013 14:27 CEST
Swedish wind turbines to power UK households

The new investment is worth 4.7 billion kronor ($400 million) and will put Vattenfall firmly on the power grid map as one of the UK’s leading producers of wind-powered electricity, the company said in a statement on Thursday.

“As the British government sees the extension of land-based wind power as an important component to economic growth and supports its development, the British markets is profitable for us,” said Peter Smink, head of Vattenfall’s sustainable energy projects.

The first park of 76 wind turbines will be built in south Wales, near Neath Port Talbot and Rhondda Cynon Taf. Installed capacity of 228 megawatt would allow the park to service the annual electricity needs of about 140,000 homes, if the turbines run at full capacity without any snags. Electricity generation could begin at the end of 2016, the company predicted.

Some 18 wind turbines are currently being erected at the Clashindarroch Wind Farm in Aberdeenshire in east Scotland. The park should be up and running by the start of 2015, the company said.

Vattenfall began investing in UK wind farms in 2008 and runs Thanet, off the Kent coast in southeast England, which is one of the world’s biggest off-shore wind farms.

TT/The Local/at

Follow The Local on Twitter

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

WIND

Denmark approves plans to build North Sea ‘energy island’

Denmark has moved forward with plans for an artificial island in the North Sea that could generate wind power for at least three million households, a government spokesman said on Friday.

Published: 5 February 2021 16:05 CET
Denmark approves plans to build North Sea 'energy island'
File photo: Henning Bagger/Ritzau Scanpix

Work is due to begin by 2026, he added. 

The Danish parliament adopted in June a political environmental framework aimed at reducing the country's CO2 emissions by 70 percent by 2030, which included plans for the world's first “energy hubs” on the island of Bornholm in the Baltic Sea and in the North Sea.

On Thursday, parliament went further by approving a plan to place the North Sea hub on an artificial island, with a wind power farm that will initially supply three gigawatts (GW) of electricity.

That could later be scaled up to 10 GW — enough for 10 million households — according to the Danish Ministry of Climate, Energy and Utilities.

The island is to be majority owned by the Danish government in partnership with private companies.

Its final size is yet to be decided but it is expected to cover between 120,000 to 460,000 square meters (about 1.3 to 5 million square feet), ministry spokesperson Emil Lee Madsen told AFP.

The total number of wind turbines has not been finalised either, but estimates range between 200 and 600 units at “a previously unseen scale,” with the tip of the blades reaching as high as 260 meters (850 feet) above the sea.

The project's next steps include environmental impact assessments and talks with potential investors, so construction is still some years off.

“At this point it seems like initial construction will actually begin around 2026, and hopefully it will be finished sometime between 2030 and 2033,” Lee Madsen said, noting that some delays were probable so closer to 2033 was more realistic.

At full capacity, the island would provide more wind power than Denmark needs for its population of 5.8 million.

Other countries could then plug into the hub to “increase the efficiency of the electricity production from the wind farms by distributing it across the European power grid,” the ministry said.

READ ALSO: Denmark proposes giant 1.3GW wind to jet fuel plant

SHOW COMMENTS