'Turbulent weather' and Covid delay start at world's biggest lake-based wind farm
Installation at 383MW Wind Farm Fryslân in the Netherlands now expected to be completed in third quarter
The construction of the world’s biggest offshore wind farm on a lake has been delayed due to "turbulent weather" and the complex logistics of the project in combination with the coronavirus.
The contractor consortium Zuiderzeewind is now expecting to complete the installation of all 89 Siemens Gamesa SWT-DD-130 4.3MW onshore turbines at the 383MW Wind Farm Fryslân project on the Ijsselmeer artificial lake north of Amsterdam in the third quarter of this year.
The Netherlands in January was shaken by its worst riots in decades as mostly young people in dozens of cities rebelled against strict lockdown measures and nightly curfews, eventually triggering an early softening of the measures before a current vaccination campaign could produce its full effect. In recent months, Covid-19 infection rates in the country have been higher than, for example, in neighbouring Germany.
At the same time, the construction at Wind Farm Fryslân has been more complicated than in open sea offshore wind due to the shallow waters of the Ijsselmeer that made the use of conventional installation vessels impossible.
Despite the delay Wind Farm Fryslân since the installation of the first wind turbines has already been supplying electricity to customers of Dutch utility Eneco in the northern Dutch province of Frisia, which has invested €127m ($156.7m) for a minority stake in the project that will contribute about 60% to its own wind energy targets.
The project does not count towards the Netherlands’ target to boost its offshore wind capacity to around 4.5GW by 2023, which is being met with projects that won in a series of tenders for around 700MW projects in the North Sea such as the Borssele or Hollandse Kust North and South zones.
The cables between turbine foundations at Wind Farm Fryslân are already in place, as is a 55-kilometre-long the grid connection to a high-voltage substation on land near Heerenveen.
The consortium has also constructed an artificial island nature reserve at Kornwerderzand, which is slated to be open to the public in the summer of 2021, and has started to monitor the nature around the wind farm.
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