Vestas to supply 64 wind turbines to He Dreiht offshore project in Germany

Regarding Vestas Northern & Central Europe’s (Randers, Denmark) announcement in July 2021, the wind company has secured a conditional order agreement to supply 64 V235-15.0-megawatt (MW) wind turbines for EnBW Energie Baden-Württemberg AG’s (EnBW, Karlsruhe, Germany) 900 MW He Dreiht offshore wind project in 2025. In addition, Vestas will deliver a multi-year solution to service the wind project when operational.

“This project highlights how Vestas plays a leading role in the rapid expansion of offshore wind by continuously striving to build stronger partnerships with our customers such as EnBW and providing the right solutions that enable them to deliver the ambitious projects needed to reach European offshore wind targets [see “Joint declaration to lead European offshore wind capacity to 150 GW by 2050”],” Nils de Baar, president of Vestas Northern & Central Europe, says.

With a swept area of 43,742 square meters and a capacity factor of more than 60% from 115.5-meter-long blades, the V236-15.0 MW turbine will reportedly deliver industry-leading park performance for EnBW at He Dreiht. Depending on site-specific conditions, Vestas says a single V236-15.0 MW turbine can produce 80 gigawatt-hours per year, enough to power around 20,000 European households.

“Offshore is not only technically demanding, but also requires solid forward-looking forecasts, knowledge of the market and the willingness take entrepreneurial risks before a final investment decision has been made,” Michael Class, head of Generation Portfolio Development at EnBW, says. “As one of the pioneers in German offshore history, we would like to use He Dreiht to further contribute to making offshore wind energy available for the German market.”

Vestas has also entered a conditional agreement with Cadeler (Denmark), an offshore wind installation services supplier, for the transportation and installation of the turbines for the He Dreiht project. Installation is planned to begin in the second quarter of 2025, with full park commissioning anticipated for the fourth quarter of the same year. The project has a grid connection capacity of 900 MW and an excess capacity of 60 MW in order to use the connection capacity as efficiently as possible, even when production is lower.

The V236-15.0 MW prototype development work is progressing across Vestas’ R&D and production sites, and the prototype wind turbine is planned for installation later this year, with serial production to begin from 2024.