Offshore wind power

Spanish-German wind giant Siemens Gamesa has started production of its first B115 blades at its facility in Aalborg, Denmark. The blades will be used on its SG 14-236 DD offshore wind turbine, which will have an output of 14 megawatts (MW) and a rotor diameter of 236 meters (774 feet).

The US Department of the Interior today announced that it has now completed its environmental review and will hold its first offshore wind energy lease sale off the Carolinas on May 11.

The UK’s total pipeline of offshore wind projects has now reached 86 gigawatts (GW), according to new research published today by not-for-profit renewable energy trade association RenewableUK.

The US offshore wind industry is ramping up quickly, and so too are the essential industries that will support it. Danish wind giant Ørsted, New England energy company Eversource, and Louisiana-based marine transport company Edison Chouest Offshore yesterday announced that shipbuilding has started on the Eco Edison, the first Jones Act-qualified offshore wind farm service operations vessel in the US.  

Norwegian energy giant Equinor and UK-headquartered bp announced yesterday that they have made an agreement with New York City to transform the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal into a major offshore wind operations and staging hub.

On January 12, Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland announced that the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) would hold an offshore wind energy auction for more than 488,000 acres in the New York Bight. It’s now complete, and the auction achieved $4.37 billion in high bids. It’s a huge leap forward for the fledgling US offshore wind industry

Petrofac, a London-headquartered global company that designs, builds, and operates energy facilities, has signed a memorandum of understanding with Amsterdam-based Seawind Ocean Technology to deploy the latter’s two-bladed floating wind turbines.

Zhongshan, China-headquartered MingYang Smart Energy is in the process of building the largest offshore wind turbine yet: the MySE 16.0-242 wind turbine. Once it launches, it will dwarf the 14-megawatt (MW) GE Haliade-X. Why do they keep getting bigger?

The US is now on track to achieve at least 30 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind generation by 2030 – a goal that the Biden administration announced on March 29, 2021.

Maersk Supply Service, a subsidiary of Danish shipping giant Maersk, is launching Stillstrom – an offshore vessel-charging venture to support the decarbonization of the maritime industry by eliminating idle emissions. 

The British government today announced that it will provide £31.6 million ($42.5 million) to fund the development of floating offshore wind projects in order to reduce the UK’s dependency on increasingly expensive natural gas.

The US Department of Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management today gave final permitting approval to South Fork – New York’s first offshore wind farm. It’s now the second US offshore wind project authorized by the US government to begin construction.

The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) announced that it has finalized contracts with BP and Equinor for the Empire Wind 2 and Beacon Wind 1 offshore wind farms.

Crown Estate Scotland, which held Scotland’s largest-ever auction of offshore wind permits, today announced that it has selected 17 projects out of 74 applications in its ScotWind Leasing round.

The New York Bight auction will be the first offshore wind lease sale in over three years. Once built, the project will provide thousands of new jobs and enough clean, renewable energy to power millions of homes for decades. So, of course, a clueless gaggle of New Jersey NIMBYs has a problem with it.

Offshore wind power needs energy storage and power regulation, and Ocean Grazer has invented an offshore energy storage system that will sit at the bottom of the sea and manage the flow of electricity through the power grid. The Dutch startup showcased their new product, Ocean Battery, at CES in Las Vegas last week.

Stockholm-headquartered Hexicon, which develops floating offshore wind farms and designs patented dual turbine floating wind power platforms, has formed a 50-50 joint venture with Bologna-based clean energy developer Avapa Energy to develop offshore floating wind farms for Italy.

China’s largest offshore wind farm was connected to the grid at full capacity on Saturday, December 25. It transmitted power through undersea cables.

Australia is about to get its first offshore wind farms. The three projects will consist of two floating wind farms and one fixed-bottom wind farm, with a total installed capacity of 4.3 gigawatts.

The UK’s Hornsea Two offshore wind farm, soon to be the world’s largest when it’s completed in 2022, will produce its first power before December 31 of this year.

Spanish-German wind giant Siemens Gamesa’s SG 14-222 DD prototype offshore wind turbine has produced its first electricity and delivered it to the grid at the test center in Østerild, Denmark.