- innogy leading construction and operation on behalf of all partners
- Enough renewable energy for over 380,000 homes [1]
- Milestone coincides with UK’s third annual Offshore Wind Week
innogy SE today [7th November] announced that Galloper Offshore Wind Farm has generated power for the first time on 5th November. The project achieved financial close in November 2015 and over the last two years, led by innogy, the project has been constructed from the onshore grid connection in Suffolk to the Galloper site 30km off the coast in the Thames Estuary.
First generation is a hugely significant milestone that signals the beginning of the process to bring all 56 wind turbines online which is expected to complete in early 2018.
The project is owned by innogy SE, Macquarie Capital, Siemens Financial Services and a consortium managed by Green Investment Group and Macquarie Infrastructure and Real Assets.
Commenting on the milestone, Project Director Toby Edmonds said: “We have generated in record time having built the offshore part of the project in a single year which is a fantastic achievement. It has been a superb team effort that has been made possible by everyone involved from the innogy project team to our contractors and partners.”
He added: “Like this project, offshore wind turbine technology is moving at breathtaking speed, and as a result we are also able to announce that working with Siemens Gamesa we’ve been able to improve the turbines and increase the power from 6MW to 6.3MW from each one and 17MW across the entire wind farm. This additional power means we can supply an additional 40,000 plus homes a year bringing the total to over 380,000 homes which is a huge contribution to the shift to low carbon energy in the UK.”
innogy commenced construction of the Galloper project following Financial Close and since then progress has been rapid. 2016 saw the start of offshore activity with foundation installation commencing and the first export cable being installed. This year the offshore substation, which was manufactured by Heerema at its fabrication base in Hartlepool on behalf of Alstom Petrofac Consortium, was completed in early May, along with the first turbine installation, and second export cable installation. To date, as well as reaching first generation, all 56 array cables have been placed and buried and 38 of fifty-six turbines are now in situ.
innogy is one of the leading renewable developers in the world, with a significant installed renewables capacity of 3.7GW. Currently innogy has more than 0.9GW of installed capacity in offshore wind, with six offshore wind farms in operation, two currently in construction including Galloper, and a number in development.
[1] Energy predicted to be generated by the proposal is derived using wind speeds monitored in the local area and correlating to long term weather data. The calculations are based on an installed capacity of 353MW. The energy capture predicted and hence derived homes equivalent or emissions savings figures may change as further data are gathered. Equivalent homes supplied is based on an annual electricity consumption per home of 4100 kWh. This figure is supported by recent domestic electricity consumption data available from The Digest of UK Energy Statistics and household figures from the UK Statistics Authority.