Page 49: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (April 2012)

German Offshore suppliers are continuing to step up their involvement in the off- shore oil and gas industry, a trend that is now several years in the run- ning. And while much business is cen- tered on the traditional oil and gas area, the emerging offshore wind segment is providing plentiful opportunities. On August 4, 2010 the Federal Gov- ernment adopted a national renewable energy action plan (NAP) and reported this to the European Commission inBrussels. According to this, about 25 gi- gawatts offshore wind-energy power shall be installed by 2020. This corre- sponds to an investment volume of over 75 Billion Euro during the next 10 years. Thus, the offshore wind-energy sets a bearing pillar in the energy and climate protection policy, with enor- mous potentials of growth. Particularly by the needful networking with the mar- itime economy ? shipping, ports, ship-yards ? a sustainable growth in these branches can be created.More than 1 billion Euro have already been invested in works and infrastruc- ture for the development of the offshore wind-energy at the coastal line of the North and Baltic Sea. Beside the re-gional economy in the coastal areasbenefits the supplier industry in all fed- eral states. Hence, the growing energy and industrial political weight of theoffshore wind-energy is of outstanding economic importance.Offshore Energy Supply Increases Around 108 (2010: 50) MW in Ger- many have been connected to the grid. This corresponds in total to around 200MW at the grid by the end of 2011.Offshore is a long planned large plant construction business which follows other laws than onshore business. Hence, there will be, by the end of2012, 10 offshore wind-parks, with a total of more than 2,000 MW power output, with an ensured order volume of around 7 billion Euro, under construc-tion. To bring these parks into success- ful business concepts and further parks become reali-ty, it is of essential neces- sity to have planning dependability at the grid connection,? highlights Thorsten Herdan, head of VDMA Power Systems. Positive Results from Alpha Ventus Alpha Ventus is the first German off- shore wind farm that was constructed on the high seas. The pilot project is lo- cated approximately 45 km from thecoast of Borkum, and provides funda- mental experience in the construction and operation of an offshore wind farm. Twelve 5-MW class wind power tur- bines are operating at the Alpha Ventus test field: six AREVA Wind M5000 tur- bines and six RE-power 5M turbines, resting on two different foundations. Whereas the AREVA wind turbines stand on tripods, the REpower turbines are mounted on jacket foundations in a water depth of 30m.This first offshore wind farm Alpha Ventus is generating more power than ex- pected. While the first half of 2011 was disappointing for onshore wind farms, the constant and strong winds on theopen sea by the end of 2011 have pro- duced about 200 Gigawatt hours of elec- tricity. The Alpha Ventus consortium, consisting of the utilities EWE, E.ONand Vattenfall, reports that the wind yield was around 6% higher than had been ex- pected for this period."The high power yield of Alpha Ven- tus shows that offshore wind is already one of the pillars of a safe and reliablepower supply. Offshore and onshore wind power complement each other perfectly, and even balance each other out", says Dr. Claus Burkhardt of the utility com- pany EWE in his capacity as DOTI April 2012www.marinelink.com 45