07/March/2018
The experience of Iberdrola as one of the main wind energy developers worldwide, make the company the best partner to coordinate ROMEO Project. Iberdrola participates in the project as coordinator and leading project management, providing its expertise in O&M in all WPs, supporting Project requirements and specifications, supporting development of the tools and providing inputs and expected outputs.
In addition, Iberdrola will lead testing and validation of the tools developed in the project with two wind farms (Wikinger and East Anglia 1). ROMEO concepts/tools will be exhaustively tested in a real operation environment of these two multi-scale offshore pilots. A step-by-step demonstration and validation strategy will be implemented in order to validate the developments as a global Wind Farm Decision Supporting System.
Cesar Yanes, Romeo Project coordinator at Iberdrola, has answered few questions about the project and offshore wind energy.
Cesar Yanes, Romeo Project coordinator
Why is offshore wind energy one of Iberdrola’s firm commitments?
Iberdrola is strongly committed in the fight against climate change. To this end, the company has set forth the following environmental goals for the coming decades: achieve a 30% reduction of the intensity of its CO2 emissions by 2020, as compared with the specific emissions of the company during the year 2007, placing the intensity of these emissions under 150 grams per kWh by 2030, a figure which would represent 50% less than the specific emissions of the company during the year 2007, and become carbon neutral by 2050.
Wind energy, both Onshore and Offshore, is key to achieve the abovementioned goals. Additionally Offshore Wind contributes to maintain Iberdrola´s social commitments, acting as a driver for growth and job creation in the countries where offshore wind projects are developed, creating sustainable value for all of its stakeholders.
Finally, it is worth to mention that Offshore Wind energy is one of Iberdrola´s growth key drivers for 2018-2022 period, consolidating Offshore wind as core business for the Company.
Building upon the knowledge of more than 15.000MW onshore wind capacity, and the successful experience in already materialized projects: West of Duddon Sands (389MW together with Dong Energy in the UK) and Wikinger (350 MW project in Germany), the company has seen offshore wind as an opportunity for continue developing competitive renewables projects, such as East Anglia One (714MW in the UK) currently under construction. In addition, Iberdrola has a strong and extensive offshore pipeline, over 7,5GW, showing the commitment with this technology.
Offshore Wind energy is one of Iberdrola´s growth key drivers for 2018-2022 period
Why it is so important to reduce the cost of offshore wind energy and boost the renewables industry?
Electricity demand is constantly growing and this demand should be met trying to:
- Limit as much as possible consumer energy bills. It is not only producing electricity, competitive prices are required.
- Secure energy supply. One of the main advantages of Renewables Energies is that “raw materials” are “for free”. This is a huge advantage compared to other energy sources such as gas, fuel, oil, not only because of the savings, but also because it makes countries more energy independent.
Renewables and in particular offshore wind contribute to tackle the carbon emission problem as well as will boost the generation of jobs and unique expertise,
Offshore wind energy has made a big effort to reduce costs, but there is still room for improvement in order to make offshore wind energy even more competitive with other conventional energy sources. Offshore Wind O&M costs need to be reduced and this is the main objective of ROMEO project.
Renewables and in particular offshore wind contribute to tackle the carbon emission problem
What are the main technological features of Wikinger and East Anglia wind farms?
Wikinger is a 350 MW offshore wind farm, located at the Baltic Sea. The facility will supply renewable energy to approximately 350,000 homes from the north-east coast of the German island of Rügen. Seventy 5 MW turbines were supplied by Adwen and installed over jacket foundations.
Average distance from shore is 35 km and the average depth range is between 37 and 43 meters.
With an investment of nearly 1.400 M€, Wikinger will prevent almost 600,000 tonnes of CO2 from being released into the atmosphere each year.
East Anglia One, with an installed power capacity of 714 MW, will provide clean energy to over 500,000 British homes from 2020. It is located at the North Sea. East Anglia ONE is the largest renewable energy project undertaken by a Spanish company ever, and entails an investment of £2,500 million.
These are some of the most relevant details:
- East Anglia ONE will have 102 turbines, 7 MW of unit power supplied by Siemens Gamesa, over jacket structures
- The turbines will be hosted inside wind turbine towers reaching a total height of 235 metres.
- The wind farm will be located 85 km from the coast and occupy an area of 300 km2.
Wikinger and East Anglia 1 are related to ROMEO Project. What does this kind of project contribute to Iberdrola?
ROMEO main objective is to develop advanced solutions to reduce O&M costs. During the project, new models and tools will be developed with this purpose. This target is perfectly aligned with Iberdrola´s operational excellence strategic pillar by reducing costs and increasing efficiency. This project is a very good opportunity for Iberdrola in order to work, together with other sector stakeholders, on these aspects.
How does Iberdrola predict the future of offshore wind energy?
We expect a very promising future for Offshore Wind Energy. Once the cost reduction is consolidated and more operational experience at sea is gained, Offshore Wind projects risks will be drastically reduced allowing the development of new projects.