Orsted has revealed that it has installed the first wind turbine from Siemens Gamesa at the offshore wind farm Borkum Riffgrund 3 in Germany.
Orsted’s Borkum Riffgrund 3 wind farm has an installed capacity of 913 MW. Orsted is building Borkum Riffgrund 3 wind farm without subsidies. This has been made possible by Orsted’s corporate power purchase agreements (CPPA) with customers. Borkum Riffgrund 3 is jointly owned by Orsted and Nuveen Infrastructure.
Orsted has one more offshore wind farm — the 253 MW Gode Wind 3. The two offshore wind farms will double Orsted’s total installed capacity in Germany. Borkum Riffgrund 3 offshore wind farm is expected to be commissioned in 2025.
Orsted has 7.6 GW of offshore wind under construction across three continents, including the 2.8 GW Hornsea 3 in the UK. In May, Orsted celebrated the installation of the first foundation at its 704 MW offshore wind farm Revolution Wind off the US East Coast.
Peter Obling, Head of Continental Europe at Orsted, said: “Borkum Riffgrund 3 was the first offshore wind project in the world to be awarded on a merchant basis, and it’s the first offshore wind farm in Germany to break the 900 MW-mark.”
Siemens Gamesa
Orsted has installed Borkum Riffgrund 3’s wind turbine by the installation vessel ‘Seaway Ventus’ from Seaway 7. The installation will also be carried out in equal parts by ‘Wind Osprey’ from Cadeler. Orsted will deploy 83 Siemens Gamesa wind turbines, each with a rated capacity of 11 MW.
Orsted won the rights to build Borkum Riffgrund 3 with bids of EUR 0 per MWh during the German offshore wind auctions in 2017 and 2018.
Orsted signed CPPAs with Amazon (350 MW), BASF (186 MW), Covestro (100 MW), Energie-Handels-Gesellschaft/REWE Group (100 MW), and Google (50 MW) totalling 786 MW. The contracts range from 10 to 25 years.
Orsted says Borkum Riffgrund 3 is the first offshore wind farm to be built by Orsted in Germany without an offshore substation (OSS). The new connection concept provides for a direct connection of the wind turbines via 66 kV connection cables to the DolWin epsilon offshore converter platform operated by the German transmission system operator, TenneT.