Northwester 2 Goes Into Full Operation

The Northwester 2 offshore wind farm is fully operational, with all 23 MHI Vestas 9.5 MW turbines supplying power to the Belgian grid.

Northwester 2 is the first to use the V164-9.5 MW turbines, the most powerful turbines to enter commercial operation to date, which now supply green energy via Elia’s Modular Offshore Grid (MOG).

The 219 MW project is the seventh wind farm in the Belgian North Sea, which now brings the total offshore energy capacity to 1,776 MW and moves the country closer to reaching the goal of supplying 10% of energy demand with offshore wind by the end of 2020.

“As we started the offshore construction of our fourth wind farm back in July last year, we could not have imagined the circumstances under which we would be completing this project,” said Peter Caluwaerts, Parkwind’s Project Director.

“Following the powerful storms over the winter that caused some temporary disruption, the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic forced us to deal with an unprecedented level of uncertainty. We managed to keep the project on track though.”

To remind, Jan De Nul’s jack-up vessel Vole au vent installed the first turbine at the project site some 50 kilometers north-west of Oostende in mid-December 2019.

A month later, Northwester 2 produced its first power.