Yesterday, the inauguration of world’s most powerful turbine, GE’s Haliade-X, was held in Rotterdam.
The turbine will be powering Dogger Bank Wind Farms, a joint venture between SSE Renewables and Equinor, the first project in Europe to deploy the 12MW machine that has been named the best Sustainable Invention of 2019 by Time Magazine.
The machine is a true feat of innovation and engineering and we, and our project partners, would like to congratulate GE on their dedication and hard work to develop and, soon enough, begin to deploy, this world-leading technology.
As we near the end of this decade, it is a good moment to reflect on what has been a transformative ten years for the offshore wind sector. At the turn of the 2010s offshore wind was still perceived by some as expensive and unlikely to play a key part of the energy transition.
Now, I think we can safely say that the offshore wind industry has proven itself on every count – cost, deliverability and scale. We are now credibly talking about seeing 40GW of offshore wind in the UK by 2030, with the potential for 450GW across Europe by 2050.
As we enter the 2020s, we’ll see concrete steps towards this, with the commencement of construction for Dogger Bank – a game changer for the offshore wind industry.
At 3.6GW, this project will be the largest offshore wind farm in the world. In just a few years’ time, the Haliade-X turbines inaugurated today will be standing in the middle of the North Sea at Dogger Bank producing green electricity for millions of British households for years to come.
Getting to this point on the Dogger Bank projects, after 10 years of development, has required a huge amount of effort and commitment on the part of the Dogger Bank team, the shareholders, SSE Renewables and Equinor, along with our supply chain partners including GE.
Collaboration was vital to delivering the winning bids in what was an intensely competitive CfD auction and we look forward to further developing these partnerships in the years to come.
In terms of the next steps for Dogger Bank, we are focused on finalising our preferred suppliers and working towards bringing the three Dogger Bank projects to financial close. Offshore construction will start following financial close with the first Haliade-X turbines expected to be generating by 2023 and completion of all three projects by 2026.
All that remains to be said is congratulations again to GE Renewable Energy for this achievement – what a way to end an eventful year for our industry.
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