Ørsted switches on 5th German offshore wind farm

On its own considered fairly slight by today’s standards, with 23 turbines generating 11MW each, the addition of this farm, Gode Wind 3, brings the total of operational capacity for Germany by Ørsted up to 1,500MW (1.5GW).

Once the in-build Borkum Riffgrund 3 wind farm is operational, that will increase by 913MW to almost 2.5GW.

Construction has taken about a year and a half, having begun in August 2023. In October, the company sold 50% of its shares in the wind farm to Nuveen Infrastructure, which used to be known as ‘Glennmont Partners from Nuveen’.

Nuveen also owns 50% of the Borkum Riffgrund 3 Ørsted offshore wind farm.

The turbines, by Siemens Gamesa, have a rotor diameter of 200 metres, which is currently the largest in German waters.

Electricity will be transmitted via the wind farm’s own offshore substation and a converter station by German transmission system operator TenneT.

Ørsted says this wind farm used a new method of monopile foundation installation on three of its turbines, involving a jetting technology attached to the monopiles to lower the resistance of the surrounding soil, ‘effectively allowing the foundation to sink into the seabed’ instead of pile driving.

This method reduces underwater noise, says Ørsted, ‘to a level just marginally above the ambient noise found in the German Bight in the North Sea’.

“Once industrialised, it could not only be cheaper, faster, and far quieter – without additional mitigation – than any other monopile installation technology, it also has the potential to make next-generation foundations lighter as they won’t need to be designed for the conventional installation process,” said Ørsted executive vice president and chief operating officer Patrick Harnett.

“I’m very proud to see that Gode Wind 3 now completely feeds in power to the German grid, having started its full commercial operation,” said Felix Gschnell, programme director for Gode Wind 3. Completing this project in a challenging industry environment has been a massive effort for our team and our entire supply chain – to whom I would like to say a big thank you.”