Alpha ventus, Germany’s first offshore wind farm is generating more power than expected, the operators said today.
The 12 turbines off the island of Borkum generated at least 190 gigawatt-hours of electricity the past nine months, 5 percent more than expected. That’s due to strong winds at sea even as winds on land were weak, operators EON AG, Vattenfall Europe AG and EWE AG said today in an e-mailed statement.
The 5-megawatt turbines, supplied by AREVA Wind, a German business unit of AREVA, and REpower Systems SE, were operational almost 98 percent of the time, the group said.
The test farm about 30 miles (48 kilometres) off Borkum in the North Sea went into operation last year. The German government plans to have 10,000 megawatts of offshore wind capacity installed by 2020.