Vestas Wind Systems A.S. is considering building its new giant 7-megawatt offshore wind turbine announced last April at a naval dockyard in the county of Kent, southeast of England.
The Danish wind turbine maker signed an option to lease 70 hectares of land at the Port of Sheerness, about a month after it announced it was looking for a site on which to build its V164 7.0MW wind turbines.
The turbine is the first it developed specifically for the offshore wind category.
Vestas, the worlds’ biggest turbine maker by market share, said it is prepared to make the necessary investments to secure the lease and have the manufacturing and installation facilities built.
But it hopes to receive enough turbine orders to justify the large cost of building factories that can manufacture the larger turbines.
A portion of Sheerness, which currently serves as a terminal for fresh produce, vehicles and forest products, will be overhauled to house a turbine factory covering 93 football fields. The turbine blades it will make spans 80 meters long – longer than a train of nine London double-decker buses.
“We have shown our intentions to make major investments and subsequent job creation, but it is evident that we don’t just jump head first into an investment of this size,” said Anders Soe-Jensen, president of Vestas Offshore, mentioning that the factory will create more than 2,000 jobs directly and indirectly.
Construction of the turbine’s first prototypes is scheduled to begin later next year. The facility will shift into mass production by the first quarter of 2015, depending on the demand situation.
Offshore wind growing too fast
Britain has ambitious plans to install as much as 32 gigawatts’ worth of offshore wind farms under the U.K. Round 3 project, a raft of new offshore project licenses being awarded by Britain’s Crown Estate.
The country is following a binding European Union-wide target to get 20 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020.
But according to the Renewable Energy Foundation, the country is far behind goal, generating only 6.5 percent of its electricity from renewable sources last year.
“The U.K. represents the world’s largest offshore wind market and as such has a massive offshore project pipeline,” Vestas said in a statement. Mr. Jensen said in April that Vestas’ 7-MW turbines is an “obvious and ideal choice” for projects like the U.K. Round 3, where wind farms will be built in particularly rough seas but holding enormous potential for emission-free electricity.
However, a report by the independent Committee on Climate Change published on Monday said the country should reduce its offshore wind installations by 15 to 20 percent up to 2020 and match this with an increase in onshore wind for the short term in order to meet its renewable energy objectives
Currently, offshore wind is too expensive, a consideration which the report said should make Britain invest in more mature and cost-effective onshore plants.
Still, by around 2020, offshore wind will be about the same price as nuclear power, the report estimates.
“The danger is of building offshore wind too fast and increasing the cost, which will come down after 2020. We are still arguing for stretching the targets for renewable energy for 2020 but shifting the mix,» Lord Adair Turner the committee’s chairman, shared with the BBC.
“Making that happen lies in the hands of the policy makers, so we are looking forward to seeing the UK government providing the best possible terms for the offshore wind industry to truly take off and the potential jobs becoming a reality,” Mr. Jensen said in a statement.
