Offshore wind power
The world's largest offshore wind farm just hit two major milestones
Michelle Lewis | Oct 21 2021 - 8:41 am PT
The UK's Hornsea Two offshore wind farm, soon to be the world's largest when it's completed next year, just achieved a couple of major construction milestones.
The first wind turbine was installed in May at Hornsea Two, which is 55 miles (89 kilometers) northeast of Grimsby, in Lincolnshire.
Danish wind giant Ørsted's 1.3 gigawatt (GW) offshore wind farm will feature 165 Siemens Gamesa 8.4 megawatt (MW) wind turbines, an offshore substation, and a reactive compensation station.
Now Hornsea Two has achieved two major milestones. First, all of the wind turbine foundations are now installed, which means it's ready for the final third of wind turbines to be put in place. Most of the blades were manufactured at the Siemens Gamesa factory in Hull.
Also, the offshore substation is complete:
Hornsea Two substation Photo: Ørsted
What is now the world's largest AC offshore substation weighs around 8,000 metric tons.
The Reactive Compensation Station (RCS) will also be lifted into place soon. An RCS is required because of cable length, so it will compensate for reactive power losses in order to ensure power transmission efficiency. Both the offshore substation and the RCS were built in and transported by sea from the Sembcorp Marine facility in Singapore.
Once Hornsea Two becomes fully operational in 2022, it will be the largest operating wind farm in the world, outsizing its sister project, the 1.2 GW Hornsea One. It will supply power to more than 1.3 million homes in the UK.
But its superlative status will be temporary, because it will be dethroned by the 4.8 GW Dogger Bank, also off Yorkshire in the UK, once it's completed in 2026, as well as other global projects in the pipeline.
Read more: Offshore wind could power the whole world, says IEA
Photo: Ørsted