Turbines installed at world’s largest offshore wind farm

The last of 87 turbines at the world’s largest offshore wind farm, off the coast of Cumbria, England, have been installed. 

The 145-square-kilometre Walney Extension wind farm in the Irish Sea is a shared-ownership project between Ørsted (50 per cent) and two Danish pension funds PFA (25 per cent) and PKA (25 per cent).

The 659MW wind farm has been installed in two phases utilising turbine technology from MHI Vestas and Siemens Gamesa, with Seajack’s Scylla vessel installing all turbines.
MHI Vestas Offshore Wind installed 40 of its 8MW turbines and Siemens Gamesa installed 47 7MW turbines.

Walney Extension will be capable of meeting the annual electricity demands of more than 500,000 UK homes when fully operational in the second half of 2018.

Work is continuing on the commissioning of the substations.

Construction of the project is being co-ordinated from the Port of Barrow.