Construction of the Arkona offshore wind farm in the German Baltic Sea is progressing at a fast pace. After the foundations, the 60 connecting pieces are now also prematurely installed. The so-called ‘Transition Pieces’, each weighing 400 tons, were taken from the port of Mukran on Rügen into the construction site and placed on the foundations and bolted together. The project has thus also successfully completed the second major construction phase on the high seas.
Preparations for the next steps are also in full swing. At the French shipyard STX France, the transformer station, which will be operated jointly by the project partners E.ON and Statoil and the transmission grid operator 50Hertz, will be transported by sea from the French Atlantic Ocean to the Baltic Sea in spring. Once this platform has been installed, the turbines are connected to the substation. The 75 kilometres of submarine cables required for this have already been delivered from the Nexans plant in Hanover to the base port of Mukran Port in Sassnitz. At the same time, production of the six-megawatt turbines has begun at the Siemens plants.
The Arkona project is located 35 kilometres northeast of the island of Rügen. The wind farm will have a capacity of 385 megawatts (MW) and will be able to supply up to 400,000 households with renewable energy from 2019 onwards. Compared to conventionally generated electricity, Arkona saves up to 1.2 million tons of CO2 per year. It will install 60 six-megawatt class turbines from Siemens. The plants are based on Monopfahl foundations at water depths of 23 to 37 metres. The investment amounts to €1.2 billion. Arkona is a joint venture between E. ON and the Norwegian energy company Statoil.
