A game of two halves for European wind
The Beatrice windfarm demonstrator project was constructed by SERL.
This week saw a mixed picture in Europe’s offshore renewables sector. Four offshore wind demonstrator units are being put together through a partnership between two Norwegian energy companies and GE Energy.
However, another major player, SeaEnergy, is selling its shares.
Statoil and Lyse will jointly carry out technical and environmental feasibility studies for building the demonstration project in Rogaland County, off the southwest coast of Norway. The agreement includes the installation of up to four 4.0-megawatt offshore, direct drive wind turbines. These will feature the largest wind turbine in GE’s fleet, a 4.0-megawatt machine that includes a 110m rotor.
Subject to successful completion of the feasibility studies and the appropriate investment and funding decisions, the installation of the wind turbines will start in 2012.
GE is also planning a coastal, inshore installation of its direct drive machine in 2011. This will be erected in Gothenburg Harbour in Sweden in cooperation with Gothenburg Energy.
However, following a financial setback, 80% of SERL, SeaEnergy’s renewable subsidiary, is now up for grabs.
SeaEnergy is relinquishing its holdings in SERL, which has net interests of 781mW in three separate offshore wind farm sites in the UK. One is a joint venture with SSE Renewables, another is with RWE npower, and a third with EDPR.
Steven Bertram, managing directory of SeaEnergy, said, 'In an equity market which does not yet appreciate the huge opportunities afforded by offshore wind, we have chosen to create our own equity for future investments in the sector by crystallising the value we have created in our SERL subsidiary.'
Cutting to the chase, it means that the company could not get enough mainstream investors interested, finally reporting a pre-tax loss of £6.5m. It intends to focus instead on building up a presence in the new (and lucrative) market for offshore turbine servicing.
This is despite the fact that in January EDP Renováveis and SERL were awarded the Round 3 offshore wind farm developments in the Moray Firth, Scotland, with an approximate installed capacity of 1.3gW, enough to power 730,000 homes.
The SeaEnergy Renewables team were responsible for conceiving, developing and delivering the Beatrice Wind Farm Demonstrator Project. These were the two first 5mW wind turbines installed offshore, and placed in 45m of water these were also the deepest, showing the viability of the deepwater projects in the Moray Firth.
Images for this article - click to enlarge
Unless otherwise stated, all images copyright © Mercator Media 2010. This does not exclude the owner's assertion of copyright over the material.
