Offshore wind power

Australia’s federal government has declared its first offshore wind farm zone. It’s off Victoria’s south coast, in the southeastern region of the country.

GE Renewable Energy announced today that its Haliade-X wind turbine, the first 12 MW+ turbine built, has received a full type certificate for operations up to 14.7 MW from DNV, the world’s largest independent certification body. 

The first of 62 transition pieces to be manufactured for Vineyard Wind 1, the United States’ first utility-scale offshore wind farm, has just been moved to the port of Avilés, Spain, for shipment to Massachusetts.

France’s first commercial-scale offshore wind project, the 480 megawatt (MW) Saint-Nazaire Offshore Wind Farm, is now fully up and running.

Hywind Tampen, the world’s largest and Norway’s first floating offshore wind farm, powered up yesterday for the first time.

Global sustainable energy giants Hitachi Energy and Equinor today announced that they have signed a strategic collaboration agreement. They’re going to join forces on global electrification, renewable power generation, and low-carbon initiatives.

All 72 of the 5,000-tonne gravity-based foundations for France’s 500-megawatt (MW) Fécamp offshore wind farm are now complete.

The UK’s onshore and offshore wind farms generated more than 20 gigawatts (GW) for the first time yesterday, setting a new record, according to National Grid ESO.

You may not currently think much about subsea export cables or even know what they are. But as the offshore wind revolution ramps up for Americans in particular, all the components that transport clean energy from wind turbines to US households will become more familiar. That’s where Nexans comes in. The Paris-based global cable company is going to provide vital subsea export cables to three offshore wind projects in the United States, and those cables will bring the power to the mainland.

Electrek spoke with Ragnhild Katteland, executive vice president, subsea & land systems business group at Nexans and CEO of Nexans Norway, about the big US offshore wind projects the company is a part of, what she thinks makes the US offshore wind market unique, and what she predicts will happen in the US offshore wind market in 2023.

The city of Chaozhou, in China’s Guangdong province, is going to build an offshore wind farm so large that it is expected to provide more power than all of Norway’s power plants combined.

The US Department of the Interior today announced that the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) will hold an offshore wind energy lease sale on December 6, 2022, off central and northern California. It’s also the first-ever US sale to support potential commercial-scale floating offshore wind energy development.

A 13.6 megawatt (MW) offshore wind turbine with a record-breaking rotor diameter of 252 meters (827 feet) has debuted in China ahead of the country’s 20th Party Congress in Beijing, which opened yesterday.

The US offshore wind industry has hit the ground running: Coastal states increased their long-term offshore wind targets by 58% in the third quarter of 2022. That sets a record for quarterly growth, according to the Business Network for Offshore Wind’s inaugural “US Offshore Wind Quarterly Market Report.”

The total global pipeline of floating offshore wind projects has more than doubled in the past 12 months in terms of capacity, from 91 gigawatts (GW) to 185 GW.

Siemens Gamesa’s 14-222 DD offshore wind turbine prototype has, according to the Spanish-German wind giant today, set a world record for the most power output by a single wind turbine in a 24-hour period: 359 megawatt-hours.

There are plans in place to develop the UK’s Dogger Bank offshore wind farm in three phases: A, B, and C. It will become the world’s largest offshore wind farm upon completion, with an installed capacity of 3.6 gigawatts (GW). And it looks likely that it will get a fourth phase, Dogger Bank D, making it even more massive.

Stockholm-headquartered renewable energy developer OX2 has signed letters of intent with Swedish edible seaweed companies Nordic SeaFarm and KOBB to explore the possibility of seaweed farming at one of OX2’s offshore wind farms.

The UK’s Hornsea 2, the world’s largest single offshore wind farm, is now fully operational.

Seagreen offshore wind farm, 16.7 miles (27 km) off the coast of Angus in eastern Scotland, has generated its first power. The £3 billion ($3.54 billion) project will be Scotland’s largest offshore wind farm. It will also be the world’s deepest fixed-bottom offshore wind farm, as it’s being sited in water depths of up to 194 feet (59 meters).

Scientists have come up with a way to make wind farms more energy efficient, and it doesn’t require new investment.

Despite pushback from residents, the Supreme Court of Ohio yesterday approved a permit for the construction of North America’s first freshwater offshore wind farm, which will be sited in Lake Erie, around eight miles north of Cleveland.