Category: Europe


ZF to supply wind turbine gear boxes to Vestas

June 22nd, 2010 | Posted in Wind

ZF has signed a supply contract with Vestas under which ZF is to supply the wind turbine manufacturer with gear boxes. The new gear boxes are to be manufactured in ZF's facility in Gainsville, Georgia (USA), and first deliveries are to begin in 2012. The manufacturing facility will eventually be capable of producing 2000 gear boxes annually, to accommodate the growing wind energy industry.

ZF has plans to achieve annual sales reaching about USD 200 million. This deal with Vestas will certainly help the company get there. ZF is investing about USD 90 million into the new manufacturing facility in Georgia.

[source: ZF, image: ZF]


RWE Innogy awards foundation contract for Nordsee Ost to Aker Verdal

June 22nd, 2010 | Posted in Wind

RWE Innogy announced it has awarded the contract to build and install the foundations for the Nordsee Ost offshore wind farm to Aker Verdal, a Norwegian construction and technology group. The company will supply a total of 48 jackets for as many wind turbines, each to have 6 MW of capacity. The contract is worth about EUR 115 million.

Nordsee Ost is located about 33 km northeast of Helgoland. The foundations are going to be delivered to Bremerhaven in autumn 2011 (the first units). This is the base port for RWE's offshore operations, and from there the company will transport the foundations to the wind farm site. The foundations are to be installed at water depths of about 22-25 meters. These concrete jackets will support REpower 6 MW wind turbines, first of which are to be installed in mid-2012.

[source: RWE Innogy]

Saint-Gobain to build a second plant to produce PV modules in Germany

June 16th, 2010 | Posted in Solar

Saint-Gobain has announced that its subsidiary Avancis will be building a new plant to produce PV modules to cover the roofs of residential, industrial and commercial buildings as well as solar plants. This industrial site will be located in Torgau, Germany, where the Group is already present through Saint-Gobain Glass (flat glass and coated glass), Saint-Gobain Sekurit (automotive glass) and Avancis (PV modules).

This new plant will be Avancis' second German facility manufacturing thin-film CIGS (Copper – Indium – Gallium – Selenide) PV panels, with a production output of 100 MWp/year, which is an equivalent of supplying year after year the electricity needs for cities of 15,000 inhabitants. With a surface area of 25,000 m2, the site should come on stream by Q1 2012.

Avancis will use the technology based on depositing a coating of CIGS on a glass substrate, offering a way to avoid traditional crystalline silicon and achieve higher conversion efficiencies than other thin-film technologies (above 12% industrially and up to 20% in the laboratory). Panels created this way are also efficient at lower light levels and offer competitive advantages in terms of manufacturing costs.

[source: Saint-Gobain]

SunPower, Naturener team-up on 9 MW solar power plant in Alange, Spain

June 16th, 2010 | Posted in Solar

SunPower is building a 9.1 MW (AC) solar power plant in Alange, Badajoz, Spain for the Naturener Group. This will be the fifth solar power plant that SunPower has designed and constructed for Naturener Group to date, and one of the largest to be commissioned in Spain this year. SunPower will also provide operations and maintenance services under the agreement with Naturener.

SunPower will install its SunPower T0 Tracker technology at the 38-hectare site to follow the sun during the day, delivering up to 25% more energy than fixed-tilt systems. The system avoids panel shading while increasing energy production. In addition, a smart grid system will enable the solar plant and Naturener's nearby hydraulic power plant to share a utility grid connection.

On the Trackers, SunPower will mount its Serengeti solar panels. Construction on the plant will start this month and is expected to employ over 150 people locally.

[source: SunPower]

DONG Energy inaugurates Gunfleet Sands offshore wind farm

June 16th, 2010 | Posted in Wind

DONG Energy officially inaugurated its Gunfleet Sands offshore wind farm in the Thames Estuary, off the coast of Essex. The 172 MW wind farm has been supplying power since March 2010, when it went on line. It is estimated the wind farm supplies enough clean electricity for about 125,000 average British homes.

DONG Energy is involved in numerous other offshore wind developments in the UK. One of the most significant projects is the London Array wind farm, which is to have initially about 630 MW, but will be expanded to about 1 GW of capacity.

[source: DONG Energy]

Offshore Wind Power Marine Services to build 60 new wind farm support vessels

June 16th, 2010 | Posted in Wind

Offshore Wind Power Marine Services (OWPMS) has formed a joint venture with The Brook Henderson Group to offer vessel supply during construction and operation and maintenance phases of offshore wind energy projects throughout Europe, Asia and North America. Brook Henderson will be committing GBP 30 million of its financial resources, to finance building of 60 support vessels for the offshore wind industry, over the next 24 months.

OWPMS' client list includes companies like RWE npower, Dong Energy, Vattenfall, Siemens Wind Power – all major offshore wind developers and wind turbine suppliers. With the upcoming developments in the offshore sector, especially in Europe (UK in particular), the company's investment into a new support vessel fleet is quite justified.

[source: OWPMS]

REpower announces turbine operation results after one year of operation at Thornton Bank and alpha ventus

June 16th, 2010 | Posted in Wind

5M installed at Beatrice wind farm, in Scottish waters.

REpower announces operation results of its 5M wind turbines after one year of operation at Thornton Bank and alpha ventus offshore wind farms. The company says its turbines have achieved 97% availability over six months, which is at the performance level of onshore wind turbines, which unlike offshore units, are not subject to harsh open sea operation conditions.

REpower achieved these high rates of technical availability with continous monitoring and improvements in peformance parameters, using its Permanent Monitoring System to identify faults and react quickly to rectify any operational issues, in order to reduce down time to a minimum.

[source: REpower]

10 GW of new wind capacity in Europe in 2010 – says EWEA

June 16th, 2010 | Posted in Wind

According to the latest publication from the European Wind Energy Association (EWEA), Europe is looking at 10 GW of newly installed wind energy capacity in 2010. Although 2009 was a record year for wind capacity installations for Europe (10.163 GW), making 39% of the total new installed power capacity in Europe, this year EWEA predicts an overall increase of 13% compared to 2009.

The year 2010 is the year of offshore wind capacity, with up to 1 GW of power to be added, an almost 100% increase compared to 577 MW of offshore wind energy capacity in 2009. Even though primary wind energy markets so far, like Spain, have experienced a drop in installed and planned capacity, other areas of the European Union, such as Bulgaria and Romania, will more than compensate for the decrease.

See more information on the EWEA site.

[source: EWEA]

AES Wind acquiring 353 MW of wind energy development rights in Poland

June 16th, 2010 | Posted in Wind

AES Wind Generation has expanded its wind energy portfolio by acquiring 353 MW of development rights in Poland from Polish wind developing company Jan Reichert. AES has acquired 51% stake in the project pipeline, and will take ownership of about 90-95%, once certain milestones have been reached by Jan Reichert. About 158 MW of the total capacity in the pipeline will enter construction stage next year, requiring about USD 80 million of funds from AES through the end of 2011. The entire project pipeline will require USD 175 million from AES, and is planned for completion by the end of 2014.

With this latest acquisition, AES has increased its project pipeline in Poland to 775 MW. Poland is regarded as one of the most attractive wind energy markets in Europe. AES' global wind development pipeline is close to 6000 MW, with about a third located in Europe.

[source: AES]

transpower orders offshore wind farm connections from Siemens

June 14th, 2010 | Posted in Wind

German transmission grid company transpower ordered offshore wind farm connections from Siemens. Under the deal, worth EUR 500 million, Siemens is to provide connection solutions for two North Sea offshore wind farms to the power grid. The Veja Mate and Global Tech 1 offshore wind farms, totalling in 800 MW of capacity, will be connected to the power grid via a HVDC carrying submarine cable.

The wind farms are located about 125 km off the coast, northwest of the island of Borkum. Siemens regards this project as a challenge, and will be using the world's largest Voltage Sourced Converter system, the company's HVDC Plus technology, capable of delivering 800 MW of power.

[source: Siemens]

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