Vattenfall and Stadtwerke München (Munich City Utilities, SWM) have decided to jointly invest about 11 billion Swedish kronor (1.2 billion Euro) in a second joint offshore wind farm off the German North Sea coast.
The offshore wind project Sandbank will include 72 units of 4 MW wind turbines (totaling 288 MW) and is expected to annually generate 1.4 TWh of renewable electricity, equivalent to the consumption of about 400,000 households. Vattenfall has a share of 51 percent and will invest about 5.6 billion in the project. The new wind farm will be built northwest of DanTysk, Vattenfall and Stadtwerke Munich's first joint wind farm to be operational in early 2015. Both Sandbank and DanTysk has an installed capacity of 288 MW each. Construction on the wind farm Sandbank is scheduled for 2015.
"The Sandbank project is further testament to Vattenfall's strategy of consistently focusing our growth efforts on the expansion of renewable energy," says Gunnar Groebler, Head of the Renewables Business Unit for Vattenfall's Continental/UK region.
Sandbank – facts and figures | |||||
| Number of wind turbines: | 72 | ||||
| Type of turbine: | Siemens SWT-4.0-130 | ||||
| Nominal capacity/turbine: | 4,0 MW | ||||
| Total installed capacity: | 288 MW Predicted annual generation: 1,4 TWh electricity | ||||
| Water depth: | 24-33 m | ||||
| Distance from the coast: | 110 km (90 km from island Sylt) | ||||
| Rotor diameter: | 130 m | ||||
| Height of rotor blade tip above sea level: | 158 m | ||||
| Start of construction: | Summer 2015 |
"We know how to work offshore and we see it as a significant building block in the success of the energy transition (Energiewende) in Germany."
Vattenfall has more than 900 wind turbines in operation in Sweden, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. The company is the second largest operator of offshore wind power and at the end of 2013, a 12.5% share of the offshore wind energy in the world (850 MW out of 6900 MW).