Sandbank wind farm ahead of schedule

Various factors have contributed to the successful installation process. This is the second offshore wind farm on which Swedish state-owned power company Vattenfall and Stadtwerke München, a German infrastructure firm owned by the city of Munich, have worked together. The two companies already combined their expertise in the commissioning of the DanTysk wind farm in 2015, and when the remaining turbines at the Sandbank facility are in production, the two companies’ combined portfolio will be generating about 576 MW of power. This makes them some of the largest producers of green electricity in the German Bight.
Meanwhile, the 2011-built MPI Adventure, a sophisticated wind farm installation vessel operated by MPI Offshore, a subsidiary of the Dutch Vroon group, enabled the team to install one wind turbine per day in favourable weather conditions. During the commissioning phase, a modified vessel with a “walk-to-work” heave-compensated gangway allowed the engineering teams access to the wind turbines in wave heights of up to 2.5m.
When the Sandbank wind farm is fully operational, it will produce electricity equivalent to the consumption of 400,000 German homes and will save more than 700,000 tonnes of CO₂ emissions each year.