Offshore
wind in Europe reached record levels in 2017. According to statistics released
on February 6 by WindEurope, Europe installed 3.1 GW of new offshore wind,
taking total capacity to 15.8 GW, an increase of 25% in just one year.
WindEurope
said 13 new offshore wind farms were completed, including the world’s first
floating offshore wind farm, Hywind Scotland.
“A 25%
increase in one year is spectacular,” WindEurope CEO Giles Dickson said.
“Offshore wind is now a mainstream part of the power system…and the costs have
fallen rapidly. Investing in offshore wind today costs no more than in
conventional power generation. It just shows Europe’s ready to embrace a much
higher renewables target for 2030. 35 percent is easily achievable, now that
floating offshore wind farms are also coming online,” he added.
The UK and
Germany accounted for most of the wind farms, installing 1.7 GW and 1.3 GW,
respectively. Europe now has over 4,000 offshore wind turbines operating across
11 countries, making a total of 15.8 GW of installed and grid-connected
capacity.
The average
size of the new turbines was 5.9 MW, a 23 percent increase in 2016. The average
size of the new offshore wind farms was 493 MW, a 34 percent increase in 2016.
Capacity factors are increasing too. There are projects in Europe already
operating at capacity factors of 54 percent (Anholt 1, Denmark) or 65 percent
(Dudgeon, UK), according to WindEurope.
A further
11 offshore wind farms are currently under construction, and they’ll add
another 2.9 GW of power. The project pipeline should then give us 25 GW total
by 2020. Offshore wind in Europe remains heavily concentrated in a small number
of countries, with 98 percent in the UK, Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, and
Belgium.
https://www.neweurope.eu/article/offshore-wind-in-europe-up-25-in-2017/