Ten Most Read News on OffshoreWIND.biz in 2022

With over 2,000 articles published on offshoreWIND.biz in 2022 and several million pageviews, there are some news that garnered more attention than others. Below are our top ten most read news in 2022:

Sweden-headquartered SeaTwirl published a white paper that outlines the possibility of ‘dramatically’ increasing the power density on offshore wind farms by placing the company’s vertical axis wind turbines (VAWT) closer together.

In September 2022, a US federal judge in Boston barred General Electric (GE) from “making, using, offering for sale, selling, importing (into), or installing in the United States” the Haliade-X offshore wind turbine after the jury found in June that the wind turbine infringed upon a patent held by Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy.

In March, Vattenfall announced the wind turbines of the 16.8 MW Irene Vorrink nearshore wind farm, one of the oldest wind farms in the Netherlands, would be dismantled after 25 years of operation. In place of the 28 wind turbines, Vattenfall and SwifterwinT are erecting two rows of 12 wind turbines with a total capacity of 132 MW, located 500 and 1,500 metres further into the IJsselmeer. 

In February, Vestas installed the mould for the 115.5-metre turbine blades for the V236-15 MW prototype offshore wind turbine at the company’s blades factory in Nakskov, Denmark. Since then, Vestas has built its prototype and installed it at the Østerild test centre, where the 15 MW turbine has now produced its first electricity.

In April, after leaving the Seagreen offshore wind farm site for scheduled maintenance, the semi-submersible crane vessel Saipem 7000 tilted offshore Stavanger in Norway following what was described by the local authorities as a “lifting accident”. The vessel returned to the Seagreen offshore wind farm in Scotland at the end of May/beginning of June to resume the installation of jacket foundations.

In the fourth quarter of 2022, a joint venture between Vattenfall, BASF, and Allianz issued an invitation to tender for the removal of the wind turbine monopile foundation damaged in an allision with a ship at the Hollandse Kust Zuid wind farm in January 2022.

Chinese wind turbine manufacturer Goldwind and China Three Gorges (CTG) Corporation held a ceremony in the Fujian offshore wind industrial park on 13 October 2022 on the occasion of Goldwind rolling out the nacelle for its first 13.6 MW turbine that will have a rotor diameter of 252 metres. 

In August, Ørsted’s 1.3 GW Hornsea Two project in the UK was fully commissioned and became the world’s largest wind farm in operation, taking over that title from its sibling project, the 1.2 GW Hornsea One.

In March, the ZEBRA (Zero wastE Blade ReseArch) consortium produced the first prototype of its 100 per cent recyclable wind turbine blade in Spain. Under the ZEBRA project, LM Wind Power, a GE Renewable Energy business, designed and built what the company says is the world’s largest thermoplastic blade. The news came a couple of months before Siemens Gamesa announced it was producing its first recyclable blades to be installed on an offshore wind farm, now spinning at RWE’s Kaskasi project in Germany.

In November, the first nacelle for a 16 MW offshore wind turbine jointly developed by China Three Gorges Corporation and Goldwind Technology rolled off the production line at Fujian Three Gorges Offshore Wind Power International Industrial Park in China. According to China Three Gorges, the unit has the largest single capacity, the largest rotor diameter, and the lightest weight per megawatt in the world.

ADVERTISE ON OFFSHOREWIND.BIZ

Get in front of your target audience in one move! OffshoreWIND.biz is read by thousands of offshore wind professionals daily.

ADVERTISING OPTIONS

Follow offshoreWIND.biz on: