Vattenfall Wins Bid for Denmark's Largest Offshore Windfarm
Vattenfall has won the tender to build Kriegers Flak, a 600 MW offshore wind farm in the Baltic Sea.
The winning bid was 4.9 euro cent per kWh (37.2 Danish øre/kWh, $5.46) - the lowest bid in the world. The total investment is expected to be 1.1-1.3 billion euros ($1.3 billion).
Kriegers Flak will be Denmark’s largest offshore wind farm and can supply 600,000 Danish households with renewable energy – corresponding to more than one fifth of all households in Denmark.
The Danish Parliament’s political agreement from 2012 is to be independent of fossil fuels by 2050. A part of that agreement is to build three major offshore wind farms, Horns Rev 3, Danish Near Shore and Kriegers Flak, where Vattenfall has won the tenders for all three projects.
In Denmark, winning Kriegers Flak with a historically low price proves the point raised in Danish media for the last couple of months, says Vattenfall. The minority Danish Government wants to cancel Danish Near Shore, but Vattenfall and several other stakeholders and political parties have stated that with the budget assigned from the Government to Kriegers Flak, it is possible to get both Danish Near Shore and Kriegers Flak within the same budget frame – because Vattenfall has delivered very strong price bids for the two projects.
Very active in the debate is Vattenfall’s Danish Country Manager, Ole Bigum Nielsen. “With the bid we delivered for Kriegers Flak, I will be very surprised if we are not given the green light to proceed with Danish Near Shore as well. Our winning bid for Kriegers Flak today is about 59 percent below the original cap of 90 Danish øre. And for Danish Near Shore the bid was 32 percent below its cap. If Denmark wants to reach its climate targets cost-efficiently, it is now clear to all that we have done our part to support that,” he says.
“Another important aspect is also the jobs at stake – the two projects together will result in thousands of jobs – and in rural areas that are very dependent on attracting this work force.”
Kriegers Flak is a 132 square kilometer area in the Baltic Sea, 15 kilometers from the Danish island Møn. It is planned to be operational by 2022.
Kriegers Flak will be monitored from Vattenfall’s surveillance center in Esbjerg, Denmark, which already monitors more than 1,000 turbines in Northern Europe.