05/May/2020                      

The facilities, located in the United Kingdom’s coast, are one of the ROMEO Project’s demo sites, in which the European initiative is testing its technological advances

After an intense collaborative work of nearly a year, the East Anglia ONE offshore wind farm has completed the installation of its 102 wind turbines. Located in the United Kingdom waters, 43km off the Suffolk coastline, this platform is one of the ROMEO Project’s demo sites and it belongs to IBERDROLA partner.

The installation of the turbines started in June of 2019 and finished last April. This process was undertaken by Siemens Gamesa, one of the members of the consortium that integrates ROMEO Project and the company that manufactured the 306 turbine blades of the wind farm at its factory in Hull, England.

After the manufacturing, the different turbine components were pre-assembled and loaded out from Peel Ports in Great Yarmouth in order to proceed with the construction and marshalling activity. This work was supported by local companies and personnel employed by Siemens Gamesa, including Loweshoft-based Delpro Wind and CLS Global Solutions.

With this installation, East Anglia ONE will be capable of producing 714MW of clean energy annually when it is fully operational. This energy production is enough to power the equivalent of more than 630.000 homes.

The site is one of the three pilot tests of ROMEO Project (Reliable OM decision tools and strategies for high LCoE reduction on offshore wind) along with Teesside, also in United Kingdom, and Wikinger (Germany) in which the initiative backed by the European Horizon 2020 Programme is testing its technological advances to reduce the organization and maintenance costs of the offshore wind installations.

This turbines installation is a key step in the development and demonstration of these solutions for the wind energy sector. Besides, it will help to achieve the main goals of this European project, led by a consortium made up of 12 recognised and experienced key players from 6 different states. The consortium includes large companies (Electricité De France, Adwen, Siemens Gamesa, RAMBOLL, IBM Research – Zurich, INDRA, BACHMANN Monitoring,), SMEs (LAULAGUN Bearings, UPTIME Engineering and ZABALA Innovation Consulting) and a prestigious university (University of Strathclyde, Glasgow).

Partners have been chosen to cover the whole value chain, constituting an interdisciplinary group of experienced partners, providing of its expertise to cover the different fields required.