As countries across the globe wake up to the potential of wind power, business is booming for organisations operating within the wind energy sector.
According to RenewableUK and the Sector Skills Council for the power sector, employment in the UK’s wind power industry has surged over 91 per cent since 2007.
A recent example of this job creation is the Sheringham Shoal project, which in addition to the 30 vessels working round the clock on the installation is currently employing 500 people working off the coast of North Norfolk. When complete, the 86 turbine site will employ about 25 people in logistics and support functions at the newly formed Scira Offshore Energy Company.
A further 250 companies who operate in the wind and marine energy sectors employ over 6,000 people, with this figure set to rise with the extension of seven offshore wind farm sites.
The UK government's 2020 target is to generate a minimum of 15 per cent of the UK’s electricity from green energy sources. Renewable energy currently provides around nine per cent of the UK’s electricity consumption. With the switch-on at E.ON’s Robin Rigg, the UK passed the 1 GW milestone of installed wind power across the 11 offshore wind farms; however, 1 GW is merely the starting point.
Currently, another 4.1 GW of both land and sea-based turbines are being built or are fully contracted to do so. Construction of these projects is expected to commence in 2014 with completion of all projects expected to take place by the end of 2016.
Seven miles off Foreness Point in Thanet lies the largest operational offshore wind farm anywhere in the world. When it came on-line, it boosted the UK’s generating capacity by 30 per cent, bringing the UK's total offshore capacity to 1,341 MW.
With more than 40 GW of offshore wind projects at various stages of development, the new capacity means wind will eventually have the potential to supply one-third of the UK’s electricity.
What has not kept pace with construction is the outdated and poorly interconnected EU energy infrastructure. There are no major technical barriers to integrating large amounts of fuel and pollution-free wind energy into Europe's electricity grid; but what is needed is a vision for integrating 265 GW of wind into Europe's grids by 2020.
Companies like Vattenfall, which fully or partially owns and operates eight offshore wind farms—three in Sweden, one in Denmark, one in the Netherlands, two in the UK and one in Germany—and produces 25 per cent of the world’s offshore wind power, will have to pioneer the delivery of onshore and offshore wind energy from where it is produced to where it will be consumed. The company is currently working on the development of the East Anglia Array, a gigantic offshore wind farm site in the North Sea, off England’s east coast.
What to do with this new green energy is only part of the problem. After successfully overseeing offshore wind projects from design stages to construction and final operation, Ian Johnson, head of Offshore for E.ON Climate & Renewables, comments on the challenges faced when working on these initial projects, where an established supply just didn’t exist. “The plan had been to construct [Robin Rigg] on a turnkey basis, using the EPC [engineering, procurement and construction] method, however by the summer of 2005, we were ready to sign contracts when a market change saw the contractors decide that EPC was no longer the right route for them. This left us with a big problem, as no-one in the market wanted to do a project that way anymore.”
Johnson says that Robin Rigg has been a huge learning curve, which he hopes will prove an invaluable experience for future projects. “We are a Europe-wide energy company and have a focus now on offshore projects. Our offshore wind farm projects are centralised in Dusseldorf but here in the UK we are now in the construction phase of the London Array project.”
The London Array wind farm is a joint venture between E.ON, Dong Energy and UAE-based Masdar. The location for the wind farm is the outer Thames Estuary, one of the three strategic areas the UK’s government identified for its Round 2 offshore wind farm developments.
Another project in construction is Centrica’s £725 million, 270 MW, Lincs offshore wind farm scheduled to come on-line in 2012. The site is located eight kilometres offshore Skegness, adjacent to the company’s existing Lynn and Inner Dowsing wind farm developments. Once completed, the 75 Siemens 3.6 MW turbines will increase Centrica’s equity interest to 650 MW, approximately the same as Vattenfall.
Centrica-owned British Gas has entered into a 15-year power purchase agreement to off-take all of the electricity production at the site, which will be capable of generating electricity for around 200,000 British Gas customers. Sam Laidlaw, Centrica’s CEO, commented: "Our decision to build Lincs illustrates our continued commitment to develop renewable generation and confirms our position as one of the UK leaders in green energy. The government’s enhanced financial framework for offshore wind has been fundamental in improving the overall project economics of this development.”
Centrica has also submitted planning consent applications for the 540 MW Docking Shoal wind farm and the 640 MW Race Bank wind farm, which are both situated in the Greater Wash area.
Norwegian company OWEC Tower provides the bases that are making the development of large-scale offshore wind farms possible. Per Bull Haugsøen, managing director of OWEC Tower explains: “It's an exciting time to be in the wind power business: there's a lot of it about, the turbines are getting larger and the projects bigger. But the turbines need masts and the masts need solid bases, which is where OWEC Tower comes in.”
The company has evolved from the offshore oil and gas industry and was established in its present form in 2004. It has been involved in some of the largest schemes already in existence. “Our clients get a complete design service from us. For Alpha Ventus, for example, we installed jackets on pre-installed pipes, on moveable bases. This was the first time offshore towers have been built with pre-installed piles and grouted connections,” says Haugsøen. The largest turbines currently operating produce five MW but the company has been working with manufacturers who are about to deploy six and eight MW power units.
Across the Atlantic, Brad Wiggins, CEO of Suzlon, is aware that “the US offshore wind industry is barely out of short trousers but there are some interesting projects.” Suzlon Rotor Company has helped position itself to benefit from offshore wind farm growth by acquiring a 91 per cent stake in RePower, whose turbines are often used offshore.
OWEC is involved with one US project, Deepwater Wind, which is investigating offshore sites all the way from Maryland in the south to Maine in the north; but progress is slow and it is this side of the ocean that is currently OWEC’s chief focus. “The UK and Germany are very interesting, they're going to be the two biggest markets in the whole of Europe,” Haugsøen says. The UK would like to have 20 per cent of its power from wind by 2020 and if it's going to reach that target, it has to get a move on. The numbers are potentially staggering. “There has been talk of 25,000 MW of offshore wind power for the UK. At the moment the cost per MW is between €3 million and €5 million. Multiply that by 25,000 and you can see the market is very big indeed.” Going forward, operations and maintenance will keep wind as a valuable business.
Germany may be even bigger. It has officially granted permits to 25 projects and each looks like being 80 turbines. Haugsøen reaffirms that “utilities should co-operate more closely and develop a longer-term strategy. That will enable us to achieve real benefits of scale, well above the current practice of one-off projects.”
Another company responding to gaps in the market provided by the expansion of the renewable energy sector and the investment being poured into it is Offshore Marine Management. The wind farms that are being constructed off the coasts of the UK, Scandinavia and Germany rely on cables to bring the power to the land-based grid, and with ‘supply risk’ at the forefront of governments’ minds, neighbouring countries who connect with one another to even out supply are concerned that the undersea cables are still vulnerable once laid, as some operators have learnt to their cost. In April, when the NorNed Norway to Holland interconnector broke 300 metres from the Dutch coast, it was estimated that repairs would take 10 weeks.
The reason for the failure is as yet unknown but the loss of revenue to the Dutch and Norwegian electricity utility companies will be considerable. Similarly any failure in wind farm cables would have serious financial repercussions under an OFTO (offshore transmission owner)/National Grid structure.
Undersea cables are strategically important but subject to a great deal of stress, whether from scour and subsidence or accidents like being fouled by anchors or even dredging. How they are buried and covered is critical and OMM has quickly built up its expertise in this niche. OMM’s flexibility and track record brought it into a bigger league with a contract to install and bury a large number of inter-array cables, which will link the 140 Siemens turbines destined to make up the 500 MW Greater Gabbard project off the coast of eastern England.
With Greater Gabbard currently the largest wind farm being constructed in the world and Burbo Bank due to be quadrupled in size, the industry faces no lack of opportunity; but let’s not forget that with all this green electricity being generated around the coasts of Europe, the member states still need a modern renewable energy power system of extended, upgraded and better connected grids—in a fair and effective, truly international, competitive European market for electricity.
