First Power Flows from World's Largest Offshore Wind Farm

The massive Dogger Bank Wind Farm, which will be the world’s largest offshore wind installation when completed, has begun sending power to the UK grid. GE officials on Oct. 10 said the first of the company’s turbines at the site is now operational.

Dogger Bank, located about 130 kilometers (81 miles) off the northeast coast of the UK, will feature 277 GE Haliade-X turbines, with a mix of 13-MW and 14-MW units. The 3.6-GW wind farm is being built in three phases (known as A, B, and C) and when fully operational—expected in 2026—will provide serve about 5% of Britain’s total electricity demand. Developers also have discussed adding a fourth phase to the project.

“Energizing the first Haliade-X at sea is another important step in the evolution of the offshore wind industry,” said Jan Kjaersgaard, CEO of GE Vernova’s Offshore Wind business. “The Haliade-X was designed to provide clean, reliable renewable energy at scale to projects such as Dogger Bank. It is exactly the kind of innovative technology GE Vernova will rely on to continue to electrify the world while simultaneously working to decarbonize it.”

Dogger Bank, co-owned by GE Vernova, Equinor, SSE, and Vargronn, represents an investment of about £11 billion ($13.5 billion). The project marks the global commercial debut of GE’s Haliade-X model, which was introduced in 2018 and at the time was the first offshore wind turbine with generation capacity of more than 12 MW. A prototype of the Haliade-X has operated at the port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands for more than three years, and the turbine has received independent certification from DNV to operate at up to 14.7 MW as a result of extensive testing conducted on the prototype, according to GE.

The Haliade-X also will be used at the 800-MW Vineyard Wind project off the coast of Massachusetts, and 1.1-GW Ocean Wind I project off the coast of New Jersey.

Alistair Phillips-Davies, CEO of Scotland-based energy company SSE, in a statement called Tuesday’s grid connection “a “landmark moment for the global offshore wind industry, with Dogger Bank demonstrating just what can be achieved when policymakers, investors, industry, and communities work together to achieve something truly remarkable. The innovations this pioneering project has developed will also mean future developments can be built faster and more efficiently, accelerating the clean energy transition. Now, of course, the challenge is to accelerate the next wave of these projects and we look forward to working with governments to bring these forward as soon as possible.”

—Darrell Proctor is a senior associate editor for POWER (@POWERmagazine).