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Offshore Wind Park Westermost Rough Inaugurated

Westermost Rough
Westermost Rough

Published Jul 2, 2015 8:30 PM by The Maritime Executive

The U.K. offshore wind power plant Westermost Rough has been officially inaugurated. Consisting of 35 Siemens wind turbines, each with a capacity of six megawatts and a rotor diameter of 154 meters, this project is the first to use these turbines on a large scale in a commercial project. 

The owner of the park is a joint venture between Dong Energy (50 percent) and its partners Marubeni Corporation (25 percent) and the U.K. Green Investment Bank (25 percent). With a capacity of 210 megawatts, Westermost Rough will be capable of meeting the annual electricity demands for more than 150,000 British households.

The Westermost Rough offshore wind power plant is situated eight kilometers off the British east coast. The Siemens scope of supply for this project covered the delivery and the commissioning of the direct drive wind turbines. Turbine installation was carried out using the purpose-built installation vessel Sea Challenger which is owned by A2SEA, a joint venture between Dong Energy and Siemens.

Siemens is responsible for all scheduled and unscheduled service and maintenance on the turbines at Westermost Rough for the first five years through a wind technician team comprised of 50 percent Siemens and 50 percent Dong Energy personnel. 

The 6MW wind turbines have an integrated helicopter-hoisting platform at the rear of the nacelle which allows easy and safe access for service technicians. At Westermost Rough helicopters will be used to bring the service technicians to the wind turbines. 

The U.K. leads the world in offshore wind, with as much capacity already installed as the rest of the world combined. The industry provides almost 15 terawatt-hours of electricity annually, says Renewable U.K., equivalent to the electricity consumption of over three and a half million homes.

Industry projections see a total of around 6GW of capacity installed by 2016 and around 10GW installed by 2020, by which point offshore wind will supply nearly 10 percent of the U.K.’s electricity annually.