Siemens delivered wind turbines, grid connection and provides service under a long-term agreement
London Array offshore wind power plant provides enough clean electricity to power 500,000 British households.
Siemens supplied the 175 wind turbines and the grid connection for London Array, the world’s largest offshore wind power plant.
Together with Dong Energy, Siemens will also be responsible for the service of the wind turbines through a long-term agreement.
The wind power plant owned, developed and built by a consortium consisting of Dong Energy, and Masdar has a total capacity of 630 megawatts (MW) and will generate enough power to supply 500,000 British households with clean electricity.
London Array will reduce annual CO2 emissions by approximately 900,000 tons, which equals the emissions of 300,000 passenger cars.
“London Array is the world’s largest offshore wind power plant and marks a milestone in the development of offshore wind power,” said Peter Loscher, president and CEO of Siemens AG on the occasion of the opening ceremony in Margate, Great Britain.
“This project underscores the leading position of Siemens in this attractive growth market,” said Loscher.
The London Array offshore wind farm is located in the Thames estuary, approximately 20 kilometers off the Kent and Essex coast.
Siemens supplied and installed the 175 wind turbines, each with a rotor diameter of 120 meters and a rating of 3.6 MW. In addition, the company supplied the grid connection with one onshore and two offshore substations in the North Sea.
The electricity generated by the wind turbines is bundled at sea and transported via high-voltage submarine cables to the coast.
The wind farm will be operated and maintained from a purpose-built base at Ramsgate Port.
“Projects of this magnitude contribute to further industrialization of complex production and logistics processes for offshore wind power plants,” said Peter Loscher.
During the execution of the London Array project, Siemens was able to further standardize offshore installation processes covering manufacturing, transport and logistics as well as installation of wind turbines offshore.
Offshore wind power is already playing an important role in the energy systems of Northern Europe. Its largest offshore markets, Great Britain and Germany, have ambitious development plans.
Both countries are planning rapid and broad expansion of offshore energy generation.
In Germany, a successful energy transition to meet future needs is only possible with the further increase of offshore wind power.
The German government plans to have 10 gigawatts (GW) of offshore capacity installed by 2020.
Great Britain is targeting up to 18 GW of wind energy by 2020, enough to meet nearly one-fifth of Britain’s electricity demand.
Siemens is at the front of the market for offshore wind power plants, grid connections and offshore wind service.
The company has already installed more than 1,100 wind turbines at sea with a total capacity of 3.4 GW, over two thirds of which are located in Great Britain.
In total, it has 4.6 GW of offshore capacity in its order books. Including London Array, Siemens has also implemented five grid connections in Great Britain.
Offshore wind power: Siemens marks milestone
Offshore wind power: Siemens marks milestone
Saudi minister at Davos urges collaboration on minerals
- The reason of the tension of geopolitics is actually the criticality of the minerals
LONDON: Countries need to collaborate on mining and resources to help avoid geopolitical tensions, Saudi Arabia’s minister of industry and mineral resources told the World Economic Forum on Tuesday.
“The reason of the tension of geopolitics is actually the criticality of the minerals, the concentration in different areas of the world,” Bandar Alkhorayef told a panel discussion on the geopolitics of materials.
“The rational thing to do is to collaborate, and that’s what we are doing,” he added. “We are creating a platform of collaboration in Saudi Arabia.”
The Kingdom last week hosted the Future Minerals Forum in Riyadh. Alkhorayef said the platform was launched by the government in 2022 as a contribution to the global community. “It’s very important to have a global movement, and that’s why we launched the Future Minerals Forum,” he said. “It is the most important platform of global mining leaders.”
The Kingdom has made mining one of the key pillars of its economy, rapidly expanding the sector under the Vision 2030 reform program with an eye on diversification. Saudi Arabia has an estimated $2.5 trillion in mineral wealth and the ramping up of extraction comes at a time of intense global competition for resources to drive technological development in areas like AI and renewables.
“We realized that unlocking the value that we have in our natural resources, of the different minerals that we have, will definitely help our economy to grow to diversify,” Alkhorayef said. The Kingdom has worked to reduce the timelines required to set up mines while also protecting local communities, he added. Obtaining mining permits in Saudi Arabia has been reduced to just 30 to 90 days compared to the many years required in other countries, Alkhorayef said.
“We learned very, very early that permitting is a bottleneck in the system,” he added. “We all know, and we have to be very, very frank about this, that mining doesn’t have a good reputation globally.
“We are trying to change this and cutting down the licensing process doesn’t only solve it. You need also to show the communities the impact of the mining on their lives.”
Saudi Arabia’s new mining investment laws have placed great emphasis on the development of society and local communities, along with protecting the environment and incorporating new technologies, Alkhorayef said. “We want to build the future mines; we don’t want to build old mines.”
