The first electricity has been generated by the London Array Offshore Wind Farm.
Situated around 20km from the Kent and Essex coasts in the outer Thames Estuary, when phase 1 is completed the 630 megawatt facility will consist of 175 wind turbines capable of supplying over 470,000 UK homes with electricity, while avoiding 925,000 tonnes of carbon emissions a year.
DONG Energy owns 50% of London Array, E.ON has 30% and Masdar, a 20% stake.
“Being able to efficiently develop large offshore wind farms and harvest the scale advantages in both construction and operation is an important element in our continuous efforts to bring down costs of energy of offshore wind,” said Benj Sykes, Wind UK Country Manager at DONG Energy.
DONG Energy is building three new major UK offshore wind farms and currently operates Gunfleet Sands (172MW), Burbo Bank (90MW) and Barrows (90MW) – all offshore facilities. E.ON has 1,500MW of renewable capacity under development in the UK
London Array is being built on a 245km2 site and will be built in two phases. Phase One will cover 90km2 and is due to be completed by the end of 2012. If approved, the second phase will add enough capacity to bring the total to 870MW.
In addition to the 175 wind turbines, Phase One includes offshore substations, nearly 450km of offshore cabling and one onshore substation.
The London Array project was conceived in 2001 and planning consent for a 1GW offshore wind farm facility was issued in 2006. Work on Phase One commenced in July 2009.
According to RenewableUK, the nation’s wind industry is set to power 1 in 10 homes by 2015 and wind energy will be second only to natural gas as the largest single source of UK electricity by 2020. From June 2011 to September this year, the UK’s wind energy capacity grew by 1.825 gigawatts.
