Wind farm in the Baltic Sea in two years’ time?

– Next year will be a decisive year for the Baltic Power implementation schedule. If nothing thwarts our plans, the first electricity from the wind farms in the Baltic Sea will flow in 2026,” announced Jarosław Broda, president of Baltic Power and member of Orlen Neptun’s management board, during PWEA 2024 in Świnoujście.

The Baltic Power offshore wind farm is a key project of ORLEN Group and Northland Power, located some 23km north of the coastline, at Choczew and Leba in the Polish Exclusive Economic Zone of the Baltic Sea. The Group has a concession to build a power plant with a capacity of up to 1.2 GW, but its target capacity, resulting from the chosen turbine technology, will be 1140 MW.

– A massive offshore campaign awaits in 2025. There will be dozens of ships sailing there at the same time. Foundations will be laid, transition pieces will be laid, cables will be laid, offshore transformer stations will be installed, says the president of Baltic Power.

In Baltic Power’s farm area of approximately 130 sq km, 76 Vestas wind turbines will be erected, each with a generating capacity of 15 MW. These are currently some of the most advanced turbines available on the market, and Baltic Power will be one of the first wind farms in the world to use them. The height of the turbines will exceed 200 metres and the rotor area of each turbine is approximately 43,000sqm.

In 2022, the company has secured contracts for the production, transportation and installation of all key components needed for the investment. The project has all the necessary environmental decisions in place, and in early 2023 it also obtained the first of the required construction permits for the onshore part of the project. This was one of the milestones necessary for the final investment decision and the start of construction.

– Last year, Baltic Power took the investment decision and closed the financing for the project. On land, we are building our substation. We are preparing to start operations to lay the onshore power lead cable. Our main contractors have already fabricated a significant portion of the foundations for this project. The prefabrication and preparation for the installation campaign, which will start at the end of this year and the beginning of next year, is in full swing,” declares Jarosław Broda of Orlen Neptun’s management board.

Around 25 GW of offshore wind energy is currently installed in the waters of 12 countries, of which around 2 GW is located in the Baltic Sea. Its total potential is estimated by experts at 85 GW, which is almost double the total capacity currently installed in Poland.

The draft National Energy Policy indicates the potential and assumes the development of offshore wind energy in the Polish exclusive economic zone of the Baltic Sea with a capacity of about 5.9 GW in 2030 and up to about 11 GW in 2040. Offshore wind farms in the Baltic Sea can therefore play a key role in Poland’s energy transition.

Source: PortalMorski.pl