First wind turbine installed at the Arkona wind energy project

With the start of the last construction phase, the offshore wind project Arkona enters the home stretch. After only ten months of construction, the first of 60 wind turbines was successfully installed off the coast of Rügen in the German Baltic Sea. E.ON and Equinor’s joint project is still ahead of schedule.

The turbines consist of the 100-meter-long tower, three rotor blades and the turbine house. With a total weight of almost 1,000 tons, a turbine weighs as much as 200 elephants. The tip of the rotor blades reaches a height of 180 meters above sea level and towers 30 meters above Cologne Cathedral.

All turbine components will be stored and prepared in the Arkona base port of Mukran in Sassnitz, loaded onto the installation ship ‘Sea Challenger’ and finally installed on the previously laid foundations consisting of monopiles and so-called transition pieces. Directly after installation of the components, the project team prepares the turbines for power generation. At the same time, the substation is being commissioned and the connection to the mainland is being completed.

“The entire team has done a great job in recent months to start the turbine installation ahead of schedule. We are confident that we will soon be producing clean and sustainable electricity with the first turbines,” says Holger Matthiesen, Project Director Arkona. The complete commissioning of the entire wind farm is scheduled for the beginning of 2019 at the latest.

The Arkona project is located 35 kilometers northeast of the island of Rügen. The wind farm will have an output of 385 megawatts (MW) and is expected to supply around 400,000 households with renewable energy from 2019. The investment volume amounts to €1.2 billion. Compared to conventionally generated electricity, Arkona saves up to 1.2 million tons of CO2 per year. 60 turbines in the six-megawatt class from Siemens will be installed. Arkona is a joint venture between E.ON and the Norwegian energy company Equinor.