DONG Energy offshore wind reaches 3000MW milestone

DONG Energy has reached a new milestone having installed 3,000 megawatts (MW) of offshore wind capacity - around half of it in the UK.

The total output - achieved today with the installation of turbine number 76 at the Borkum Riffgrund 1 Offshore Wind Farm in Germany - is enough to supply the electricity consumption of more than seven million people across Europe.

In 1991, DONG Energy constructed the world's first offshore wind farm - with a total capacity of just 5MW - at Vindeby off the coast of the island of Lolland in Denmark.

The first large-scale offshore wind farms, the 160MW offshore wind farm Horns Rev 1 and Nysted Offshore Wind Farm with a capacity of 165.6MW, were constructed by DONG Energy in 2002 and 2003 respectively.

Ole Kjems Sørensen, Vice President in DONG Energy, said: "Since we constructed the first two large-scale offshore wind farms in 2002 and 2003, the industry has taken several technological leaps forward. Both the turbine capacity as well as the overall scale of the wind farms we are constructing today are three to four times larger than that of those projects we constructed in 2002 and 2003."

Sørensen continued: "In 2012 we announced our target to construct 6,500MW offshore wind power by the end of 2020. In other words, over the next five years, we will construct more offshore wind power capacity than we have constructed in total over the past 15 years."

"This target is both ambitious and challenging, but we're building on our extensive experience and, every day, the highly skilled and committed employees at DONG Energy are taking another small step to ensure that we will reach our target."

DONG Energy is currently constructing five offshore wind farms: Westermost Rough and the Burbo Bank Extension in the UK and Borkum Riffgrund 1 and Gode Wind 1+2 in Germany.


Did you know?

• The average size of a wind turbine at the first four offshore wind farms was 1.7MW. The average turbine size at the last four offshore wind farms built by DONG Energy is 5.6MW
  
  
• The world's very first offshore wind farm, Vindeby near the island of Lolland in Denmark, is still operational and will celebrate its 25th anniversary next year
  
  
• At the end of 2014, a total of more than 8,000MW offshore wind had been built in Europe, of which DONG Energy had built approximately one third
  
  
• A wind turbine installed offshore produces 50 per cent more electricity on average than the same turbine installed onshore