First Sandbank Turbine Up

Vattenfall and Stadtwerke München (SWM) have now erected the first of 72 Siemens SWT- 4.0 130 wind turbines at the 288 MW Sandbank offshore wind farm being built 90 kilometers west of the island of Sylt in the German part of the North Sea.

The erection of the towers on the foundations and the installation of the nacelles and rotor blades is being carried out by the installation vessel MPI Adventure.

During the commissioning phase of the wind turbines, the service operations vessel Acergy Viking will be used. By employing this modified type of ship, the project partners expect a significant three months gain of time compared to the original planning. This “walk-to-work” vessel features a special gangway system which enables the commissioning team to climb onto the wind turbines directly. The system also equalizes the effect of any waves caused by the motion of the ship, allowing transfer operations to be carried out with sea conditions of up to 2.5 metres in height. The new concept also plans for work to be carried out 24 hours per day. The concept is used in the North Sea around Germany for the first time with the construction of the Sandbank wind turbines.

Sandbank is expected to be put completely into operation at the beginning of 2017.

”We are delighted that we can start a little earlier with the erection of the wind turbines as originally planned. We now benefit from the excellent preparatory work done by our colleagues, who are responsible for the foundations, the inter array cabling and the substation. It also shows that the co-operation between all project partners works very well,” said Hergen Stolle, responsible package manager for wind turbines at Vattenfall.

The Sandbank offshore substation was installed in April. Work on the cabling for the wind farm has been finished, while the production of the nacelles, hubs and rotor blades for the wind turbines is ongoing. The 72 foundations for the wind turbines were fully erected in mid-February 2016.

The investment costs for the Sandbank offshore wind farm are around EUR 1.2 billion.

Vattenfall holds a 51% stake in Sandbank Offshore GmbH, which was set up to implement the project, while SWM holds a 49% stake. Sandbank is the second joint offshore wind project for Vattenfall and SWM. Together with its “sister-project” DanTysk, both wind power plants will provide a combined portfolio of 576 MW of installed generation capacity, making Vattenfall and SWM two of the largest operators of offshore wind farms in Germany.

Christian Vogt, Head of Corporate Investment Management at Stadtwerke München, said: “With Sandbank another project of our Renewable Energies Expansion Campaign takes concrete form. With this campaign we want to produce by 2025 as much green energy as the city of Munich consumes. Sandbank will help us to achieve this goal significantly. I am very pleased to see the work in such good progress and without problems. Moreover, I thank all those who contribute with their commitment to the success of this very complex project.”