Siemens Energy to Build Offshore Wind Power Plant in Germany

Siemens Windturbine SWT-3.6-120 / Siemens wind turbine SWT-3.6-120

Siemens Energy has received another large order to build an offshore wind power plant in Germany. For the Amrumbank West project in the North Sea, the company is supplying 80 wind turbines, each with an output of 3.6 megawatts (MW) and 120 meter diameter rotor. The customer is Amrumbank West GmbH, a subsidiary of E.ON AG. With an installed capacity of 288 MW, this wind power plant will deliver clean energy for around 300,000 households when it goes online in 2015. This is Siemens’ seventh German order for offshore wind turbines.

With contracts signed for around 440 offshore wind turbines with a total installed capacity of approximately 1,600 MW, Siemens is the clear number one in offshore wind energy utilization in Germany” said Felix Ferlemann, CEO of Siemens Energy’s Wind Power Division. “Our offshore technology will play a substantial role in building up a clean electricity supply in Germany.” Wind turbines of type SWT-3.6-120 are currently the most successful product in Siemens’offshore wind power plants. Among other projects, 175 of these generators are being installed in the London Array, the world’s largest offshore wind power plant.

The Amrumbank West offshore wind park site is around 35 km north of the island of Helgoland and 37 km west of the island of Amrum. Siemens will deliver, install, and commission the wind turbines, and handle maintenance for an initial period of five years. Helgoland will serve as the service base, and the turbines will be installed over an area of 32 square kilometers at a water depth of around 25 meters.

In five years time offshore wind power plants will already account for approximately 20 percent of the entire wind power market. In Europe alone, Siemens is anticipating offshore wind power generating facilities with an installed capacity of more than 80 GW by 2030. That is equivalent to approximately more than half of the power plant fleet currently installed in Germany.

Wind power is part of Siemens’ Environmental Portfolio. In fiscal 2011, revenue from the Portfolio totaled about €30 billion, making Siemens one of the world’s largest suppliers of ecofriendly technologies. In the same period, our products and solutions enabled customers to reduce their carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by nearly 320 million tons, an amount equal to the total annual CO2 emissions of Berlin, Delhi, Hong Kong, Istanbul, London, New York, Singapore and Tokyo.

The Siemens Energy Sector is the world’s leading supplier of a complete spectrum of products, services and solutions for power generation in thermal power plants and using renewables, power transmission in grids and for the extraction, processing and transport of oil and gas. In fiscal 2011 (ended September 30), the Energy Sector had revenues of EUR27.6 billion and received new orders totaling approximately EUR34.8 billion and posted a profit of more than EUR4.1 billion. On September 30, 2011, the Energy Sector had a work force of more than 97,000.

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Offshore Nieuws Staff, December 16, 2011; Image: siemens