US commits to support of offshore wind

The US’ Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar, has launched a new wind energy initiative, Smart from the Start, to speed offshore wind energy development off the Atlantic Coast.

The move is expected to facilitate siting, leasing and construction of new projects. Salazar said the focus now needs to be on implementing “a smart permitting process that is efficient, thorough, and unburdened by needless red tape.”

Under the ‘Smart from the Start’ initiative, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE) will work with state partners to identify wind energy areas (WEAs) off the coasts of a number of Atlantic states, including Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, Virginia, Rhode Island and Massachusetts within the next 60 days.

BOEMRE is proposing a revision to its regulations that will simplify the leasing process for offshore wind in situations where there is only one qualified and interested developer. The revision will potentially save up to 6-12 months in the leasing process.

WEAs are offshore locations that appear most suitable for wind energy development. Data would continue to be collected for these high priority areas to inform government and industry assessments and planning, allowing a more efficient process for permitting and siting responsible development.

By January 2011, Requests for Interest and Calls for Information will be issued for these new WEAs to support lease sale environmental assessments.

Maryland’s Request for Information has already been issued and those for New Jersey, Virginia, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts are being developed. Additional WEAs will be identified in 2011 for other Atlantic States, which may include areas offshore New York, Maine, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. 

BOEMRE will assist in developing site assessment data and evaluating potential WEA leasing.

If no significant impacts are identified in WEAs, BOEMRE would offer leases in these areas by the end of 2011/early 2012. BOEMRE will work directly with project proponents to ensure that those reviews take place on aggressive schedules with frequent interagency communications and dedicated staff.

To address the need for transmission infrastructure to bring this offshore power ashore, BOEMRE will move forward aggressively, on a parallel track, to process applications to build offshore transmission lines.

Thornton Bank extension to add 295 MW

The C-Power consortium is to expand the Thornton Bank offshore wind farm, located off the Belgian coast. The project will have an installed output of 325MW on completion.

The initial phase of Thornton Bank has been operating with an output of 30MW since June 2009. During the two expansion phases, 48 wind turbines each with a generating capacity 6.15MW will be supplied by REpower Systems, the German unit of India-based turbine producer Suzlon.

The construction of the second and third phases of the project will see additional output of 295MW. The turbines are to be constructed in water ranging between 12 and 25 metres in depth on steel framework foundations known as jackets. In addition to the turbines, an offshore substation will be constructed as well as a second 150 kilovolt (kV) subsea cable – for transporting the electricity generated to land.

RWE Innogy holds 26.73 % of the consortium and is responsible for constructing the offshore wind farm some 30km off the coast near Ostend.

In total, seven European commercial banks and the European Investment Bank as well as the German and Danish Export Credit Agencies are providing approximately €900 million in financing and venture capital. Total investment in the Thornton Bank project, which also involves other companies from Belgium, Germany, France, the Netherlands and Denmark, is about €1.3 billion.

RWE´s subsidiary Essent will purchase the power generated from Thornton Bank’s second extension phase.

Gamesa leads on 15MW offshore wind turbine

Spanish wind company Gamesa is the project coordinator for the Azimut offshore wind project. The initiative will result in a 15-MW offshore wind turbine using 100% Spanish technology.

The project, which Gamesa will coordinate, will involve lead partners Alstom Wind, Acciona Windpower, Iberdrola Renovables and Acciona Energía; with other participants including Técnicas Reunidas, Ingeteam, Ingeciber, Imatia, Tecnitest Ingenieros and DIgSILENT Ibérica. The research project will require a total investment of €25m over the next four years.

Azimut was approved by Spain’s Centre for the Development of Industrial Technology (CDTI), a unit of the Science and Innovation Ministry.

The programme’s initial objectives call for developing a turbine with unit capacity of 15 MW that is capable of overcoming the technical and financial hurdles currently limiting the rollout of offshore wind energy. The most pressing of these obstacles are availability, turbine foundations and energy delivery to land, and the challenge consists in narrowing the gap between offshore energy’s cost and required investment and those of onshore wind energy sites.

The timetable of the project is slated to be finalised in 2013, but the Azimut group said it hopes to have established the technological groundwork to build the machine by 2020.

As for the technological areas on which the project will focus, Gamesa will head activities related to offshore wind energy capture, Acciona Windpower will be responsible for electricity conversion technologies; Alstom Wind will manage the marine structure and substructure segment; Acciona Energía will head construction, operation and maintenance at offshore sites; with Iberdrola Renovables managing the integration of offshore wind energy into the electricity grid.

Earlier this year, Clipper Windpower Marine, a fully owned subsidiary of Clipper Windpower, announced the groundbreaking of its offshore wind turbine blade manufacturing facility in Neptune Estate, Tyne, UK. The factory will be used to develop and build blades for the ‘Britannia Project’, a 10 MW offshore wind turbine prototype under development by Clipper. The prototype is scheduled for deployment in late 2012.

Draka bags Baltic 2 wind farm subsea array cable contract

Cable manufacturer Draka has bagged the €23 million array cabling contract for the Baltic 2 offshore wind farm from Visser & Smit Marine Contracting.

Under the terms of the contract, Draka will deliver approximately 95 kilometers of 36kV subsea power cable for use in the project. The first delivery on the cabling contract will take place in the second quarter of 2012 and the final delivery will take place in the first quarter of 2013.

Located in the Western Baltic Sea, Baltic 2 comprises 80 wind turbines, each rated at 3.6MW. It will have a total capacity of 288MW and is the second commercial offshore field being built in Germany. Managed by EnBW utility, the wind farm is sheduled to come on line in 2013. First maritime civil works are scheduled to commence in early 2012.

Vestas to supply turbines for Spanish projects

Vestas has emerged as the preferred technology partner for wind projects to be installed in Galicia, Spain.

As per the results of the public wind energy tender announced by the regional Government in Galicia, Vestas has been chosen for wind projects representing a total capacity of 1,655 MW to be installed in Galicia during the years 2012-2014.

More than 70% of the total tender capacity of 2,325 MW has been awarded to 20 bidding companies, which had submitted proposals exclusively with Vestas technology.

Vestas will now continue the negotiations with the different companies, and the orders will be announced as they become firm and unconditional and moreover comply with Vestas’ rules of disclosure, stated the company.

Vestas expects 2010 revenue of €6.8b on accounting change

Sharing the consequence of new accounting policies for supply-and-installation projects and their effect on 2006-2011, wind turbine maker Vestas now expects revenue in 2010 of €6.8bn and an EBIT margin of around 7% before one-off costs of €140-160m for the announced close-downs and lay-offs.

For 2011, revenue and earnings are expected at the same level as 2010 before the above-mentioned one-off costs.

The new policy would defer historic revenues. According to the company, historic revenue up until 30 September 2010 has been deferred by €2.9bn, which will be recognised as revenue during the coming periods. The deferral of revenue and related earnings has the effect that equity as per 30 September 2010 has been reduced by €739m.

Production and shipments related to this revenue have taken place, and prepayments and down payments amounting to €2.2bn have also been received. Cash flow is not affected by the change in policy, which - other things being equal - means that structurally, the order backlog in future will be larger than before as supply-and-installation projects now only leave the order backlog at transfer of risk to the customers.

Cape Wind’s National Grid deal approved

The Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities (DPU) has approved terms of a 15-year power purchase agreement between utility National Grid and Cape Wind Associates under which the grid will buy Cape Wind’s energy, capacity and renewable energy credits.

The 420 MW wind park is America’s first offshore wind farm on Horseshoe Shoal. Cape Wind, the 130-turbine project that will span 25 square miles of the Nantucket Sound, is expected to begin construction next year.

As per the information available, the rates would start, in 2013, at 18.7 cents per kilowatt hour. That will increase most consumers' electric bills by 1-2%. The 300-plus page contract stipulates that the price will then go up, annually, 3.5% over 15 years. After that, National Grid would have a one-time right to extend the contract for another 10 years on terms that could be below market rates.

This DPU approval comes on the heels of significant Cape Wind project announcements that locate the creation of over 1,000 new manufacturing, staging, assembly, construction, and operations jobs in Massachusetts.

In addition, Siemens has opened its North American Offshore Wind office in Boston because of Cape Wind.

EWEA: "Wind grid optimisation could save Europe €1.5bn"

Creation of a single market in electricity and improving the infrastructure of a better interconnected grid would lead to a yearly reduction of  €1,500 million in total operational costs of power generation due to increased availability of all generation capacity in Europe, says the European Wind Energy Association (EWEA) in its latest report.

The association also said that the benefit of integrating 265 GW of wind into Europe’s grids by 2020 – compared to no further growth in wind power capacity - would be a saving of €41.7bn per year in the cost of electricity.

“This is a ‘merit order’ effect of €11 for every MWh produced not just those MWh produced by wind turbines. And if our electricity markets are functioning that is a saving that could be passed on to consumers,” it said in a statement.

The association highlights that upgrading the European network infrastructure at transmission and distribution level is not only vital for the functioning of the emerging single electricity market in Europe, but is also a fundamental step on the way to large-scale wind power integration.

Better interconnected networks would deliver huge benefits for distributed renewable power by aggregating dispersed (uncorrelated) generation, which leads to continental smoothing, greater predictability and an increased capacity credit. Significant barriers to a truly pan-European grid include the public’s reluctance to accept new transmission lines (causing very long lead times), high costs and financing needs and the absence of proper cost recovery methods for multi-state lines, says the report.

New funding to support UK offshore wind supply chain

An initiative has been finalised for a detailed analysis of the capability of the offshore wind supply chain across the North of England.

This new funding has been approved by The Northern Way. Envirolink Northwest is managing the research that will be delivered by March 2011. The research will produce an on-line directory of suppliers, a guide to how companies can diversify into the sector and meet future technology requirements. Envirolink Northwest is the Northwest Regional Development Agency (NWDA) funded organisation.

A major problem for the industry is that large companies find it difficult to assess the UK’s true supply chain capability. Conversely supply chain companies find it difficult to penetrate a market where strong relationships already exist between leading companies and their suppliers in Western Europe.

The next major round of offshore wind developments, Round 3, has an estimated value of £100 billion. However, as no major turbine original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) have a UK manufacturing base, a significant proportion of the value of offshore wind developments remain with suppliers in Western Europe - especially Denmark, the Netherlands and Germany, according to NWDA.

The aim is to help progress the development of the offshore wind sector across the North of England and to supply the sector with a better understanding of the industry’s dynamics, its procurement processes and its technology requirements. The report on technology requirements will focus on areas where the development of technology will improve the competitiveness of the sector and provide business opportunities for supply chain companies.

Joe Flanagan, head of energy and environmental technologies sector, NWDA said that there is a huge variety of undiscovered talent within the supply chain of this sector.

“We aim to remove barriers to growth of the offshore wind industry and increase any opportunities to support the development of this market sector,” said Flanagan.