Wikinger

Wikinger Offshore Wind Farm Profile

The Wikinger Offshore Wind Farm is located in the German waters of the Baltic Sea, approximately 34 kilometers northeast of the island of Rügen, near the maritime borders of Denmark, Sweden, and Poland.

The project was developed by Iberdrola Renovables Deutschland, marking Iberdrola's entry into the German electricity market.
Iberdrola purchased the wind farm and exclusive rights for its development in March 2010 from a joint venture of DEE Deutsche Erneuerbare Energien and Ventotec.
Currently, Iberdrola owns 51% of the project, while Energy Infrastructure Partners (EIP) owns the remaining 49% following a stake divestment agreement in September 2022.

The wind farm has a total capacity of 350 MW, generated by 70 Siemens Gamesa AD 5-135 wind turbines, each with a 5 MW nameplate capacity.
The electricity produced is sufficient to power around 350,000 German households, which represents about 20% of the energy demand of the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.

The project offsets nearly 600,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions per year.

Each turbine has a total height of 165 meters, consisting of a 75-meter high tower, a 222-tonne nacelle, and a 135-meter diameter rotor with 67-meter long blades. The rated wind speed is 11.4 m/s, and the cut-in wind speed is 3.5 m/s.
The turbine foundations consist of four-legged jackets with four piles each. The piles are 40 meters long and 2.5 meters in diameter, weighing 150 tonnes each. The jacket foundations weigh 620 tonnes each.

The project includes the Andalucía offshore substation, which is a multi-storey topside installed on a steel jacket substructure fixed to the seabed using steel piles. The substation weighs around 8,500 tonnes and was built by Navantia in Puerto Real, Spain. It has an anticipated life of 25 years.

Construction of the project commenced in 2015, and the plant was inaugurated in October 2018. The project was connected to the German national grid at the end of 2017.
The transportation and installation of the turbine foundations and piles were carried out by Royal Boskalis Westminster (Boskalis). The piles were driven into the seabed using a specially designed self-levelling pre-piling template and a 1200 kJ hydro-hammer.

Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy supplied the turbines and is also the operation and maintenance (O&M) contractor for the project, with a contract starting from 2018 for a period of 5 years.
Iberdrola Engineering and Construction (IEC) managed the engineering, procurement, construction, and management of the offshore substation.
Navantia manufactured part of the turbine foundations and metallic structures for the offshore substation. Windar built the piles for the project.
Other contractors included CWind for secondary works, Hughes for boulder relocation and seabed survey activities, and ITW Performance Polymers for grouted connections.

The project involved an investment of €1.4 billion and generated nearly 2,000 jobs during the manufacturing and construction phases.

Noise mitigation measures were implemented during pile driving to comply with strict German authorities' requirements. These measures included double big bubble curtains, small bubble curtains around the pre-piling template, and hydro sound dampers.

Iberdrola established an operations, control, and maintenance centre in the Port of Sassnitz for the project.

The Wikinger Offshore Wind Farm is part of a larger complex that will include the Baltic Eagle (476 MW) and Wikinger Süd (10 MW) offshore wind farms, forming the largest offshore wind complex in the Baltic Sea with a total installed capacity of 836 MW and a combined investment of €2.5 billion.