EnBW Officially Opens Baltic 1 Offshore Wind Farm (Germany)

EnBW Energie Baden-Württemberg AG has officially taken the first commercial windfarm in Germany into operation today. In the presence of the Chancellor, Dr. Angela Merkel, Minister President, Erwin Sellering, and numerous representatives from business and politics, the start signal was given on the Baltic Sea coast for the commercial use of offshore wind power in Germany.

“EnBW Baltic 1 is generally a key project in Germany’s offshore segment, but especially for EnBW. We accepted this huge technical and logistical challenge and have successfully mastered it. I hereby thank our employees, our industrial partners and all authorities involved with the project. We will be able to use the mutual experiences we have gathered in this project in our next, and six times larger, project EnBW Baltic 2. The orders have been allocated, the planning is underway and the beginning of construction is forecast for next year“, says Hans Peter Vills, Chairman of the EnBW Management Board.

EnBW gained the Baltic 1 project in March 2008. The symbolic foundation stone was laid in spring 2010. Today, almost three years after the start, there are 21 wind power turbines of the height of church towers and the around 1,000 tonne substation platform, located 16 kilometres from the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern coastline in the Baltic Sea. Each turbine has an installed power of 2.3 megawatts; together they achieve 48.3 megawatts and can produce up to 185 gigawatts of electricity, or enough for 50,000 households.

The electricity produced in the EnBW Baltic 1 windfarm is transformed to the transfer voltage of 150 kilovolts on the substation platform and then transported to the coast through an around 60 kilometre long marine cable. From the edge of the Baltic Sea, the electricity flows through a ground cable to the Bentwisch substation where it is transferred to the German mains network. “We have carried out real pioneering work here and have learnt a lot. This helps us with the number of future projects in order to consequentially develop our network further in the sense of the energy turnaround and also to make sure that the Baltic Sea electricity safely arrives where it is needed; in the consumption centres in south and west Germany,” says Boris Schucht, CEO of 50Hertz.

The EnBW Baltic 2 windfarm will be another building brick in the implementation of ambitious EnBW goals in the development of renewable energy production. This includes new constructions such as the hydropower plant in Rheinfelden, the development of the hydropower plant in Iffezheim, commitment to biogas systems and photovoltaic, the development of onshore wind capacities as well as decentralised renewable energy facilities that are compiled as “virtual power stations”. “Up until 2020, we want to create a total of 3,000 megawatts of new renewable energy. This would mean doubling our current capacities and would require around 8 billion Euros in investments“, says Villis.

(enbw)

[mappress]

Source: enbw, May 02, 2011