Germany completes construction of first offshore wind farm

Nov 16, 2009, 11:15 GMT

   Borkum, Germany - Germany completed Monday construction of its first offshore wind farm, a set of 12 wind turbines in the stormy North Sea, after years of delay and debate about the risks.

The Alpha Ventus wind farm in shallow water 45 kilometres from the island of Borkum is invisible from land because the tips of the rotors, 155 metres above the water, are almost below the horizon.

The project chief said the last of the 12 had been erected and would be generating electricity within a few weeks.

Tourism resorts had worried that the turbines might spoil much-loved beaches by reminding vacationers of industrial plants.

Alpha Ventus is officially a pilot site costing 250 million euros (370 million dollars). It took seven months to build and was financed by a consortium of the EWE, E.ON and Vattenfall electricity companies. Its annual output is to meet the needs of 50,000 homes.

Project chief Wilfried Hube said the project was a lot more difficult than those that already exist in other nations and was testing two different makes of German wind turbine on two different sorts of seabed foundation.

'Basically you could say we have built two different wind farms,' said Hube. One set of six has been operating since August and has already produced 13 million kilowatt-hours of electricity.

In September, the German government approved zoning regulations that allow turbines to be sited at places in Germany's exclusive economic zone, outside the 12-mile territorial limit.

   The Federal Agency for Marine Transport and Hydrography BSH has already approved permits for 25 wind farms, 22 of them in the North Sea. The plans lagged for more than a decade because of engineers' fears the turbines would break down in such a stormy place.

Piles of stone and rubble had to be dumped into water 30 metres deep to form heavy foundations so that the towers do not tip over in hurricane-force winds.