Pile driving of the monopile “SB 62” at Sandbank offshore wind site has begun, marking the start of construction of the wind farm 90 km off the coast of Sylt.
Seventy two Siemens 4 MW wind turbines will be set up, providing an installed capacity of 288 MW. The offshore wind farm is planned to be fully commissioned in 2017.
After the DanTysk offshore wind farm, Sandbank is the second infrastructure project that Vattenfall and SWM are realizing together. The investment costs for Sandbank are around EUR 1.2 billion.
“The Sandbank project is part of our offshore cluster strategy which has the goal of further increasing the marketability of offshore technology. The cost efficiency of the planning, construction and operation of the wind turbines is of the highest priority. In doing so, we want to further advance efficient electricity generation in the North Sea. We are therefore very happy to see Sandbank go offshore,” said G unnar Groebler, Head of Business Area Wind at Vattenfall.
Christian Vogt, Head of Investment Management at Stadtwerke München , said: “SWM have highly ambitious expansion plans for renewable energies. By 2025, we want to be generating enough green power to supply all of Munich. Wind energy, particularly offshore, will play a vital role in the implementation of this. It has the most potential and is even able to provide base loads. For this reason Stadtwerke München have become involved with two further offshore wind energy projects in addition to DanTysk and Sandbank. This comparatively young technology has already overcome a huge learning curve and we expect even more significant synergy effects from Project Sandbank as a DanTysk sister wind farm.”
Image: Bladt Industries (First load out of Sandbank foundations.)