On the last day of 2011, the foundation stone was laid for Denmark's largest offshore wind farm The first of 111 giant piles (monopiles) was driven into the seabed. Each of these colossi, which will later serve as the base for the actual wind turbines, weighs almost 450 tonnes.
The "Anholt Offshore Wind Farm", as it is officially called, will generate 400 megawatts of electricity and thus cover 4 per cent of Denmark's electricity consumption. Anholt will be directly connected to the plant, meaning that there will be no need to run diesel generators to supply electricity.
The future operator Dong Energy acquired the construction licence from the Danish Ministry of Energy in 2010. The Group is also involved in the "Borkum Riffgrund 1" project off the German-Dutch North Sea coast.
The offshore facility is due to be completed by the end of 2013. Costs totalling 10 billion Danish kroner (approx. 1.35 billion euros) have been estimated for the project. However, Dong Energy is already expecting additional costs, as the ground conditions are unfavourable in some places. This was revealed by extensive investigations of the seabed prior to the start of construction. Several bombs and mines were found that had to be blown up.
Sailors will soon have to make a diversion if they want to visit the popular holiday island of Anholt - the area around the construction site will be closed.
The monopiles were built in Aalborg. As transport by floating crane would have been too slow over the long distance, the bases were simply towed to Grenå by a tugboat. Only from there did they continue on the floating crane "Svanen".
Further wind farms are also to be built off the German Baltic coast. After "Baltic I" was connected to the grid in May 2011, "Baltic II" is to be erected this summer around 17 nautical miles north of Rügen. Just like the planned offshore plants "Arkona-Becken-Südost" and "Wikinger", which will be located around 19 nautical miles north-east of Rügen, "Baltic II" will comprise 80 wind generators and will therefore be able to supply around 340,000 households.
