Construction Restarts on Wales' Rhyl Flats Windfarm

After construction delays last year, Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, TX) reports that turbine construction at the Rhyl Flats offshore windfarm off the north coast of Wales is set to restart.

RWE Innogy, part of large German utility RWE (Essen), has announced that construction of the first 25 wind turbines will begin when the jack-up barge Lisa-A has been loaded with components at the Welsh Port of Mostyn, from where it will sail to the windfarm site, which lies 5 miles offshore, the company said. The first of the 25 Siemens (Munich, Germany) SWT-107-3.6 wind turbines will be erected in a week after arrival and will be set onto one of 25 foundation piles that were sunk in 2008. Erection of the turbines was interrupted last October when the original KS Titan 1 jack-up vessel was lost in the Atlantic. It was being carried on the heavy-lift vessel MV Ancora, which ran into engine trouble before the Titan 1 capsized and sank.

The Lisa A will be joined by a replacement KS Titan 2 barge in the summer, supplied by Siemens Wind Power. To make up for lost time, turbine construction will run day and night at the 90-megawatt (MW) Rhyl Flats windfarm, which expects to be generating power by this summer and be fully operation in the fourth quarter. "The construction program to complete the second and final phase of Rhyl Flats Offshore Wind Farm is in place," says Richard Watson, Rhyl Flats project manager. "During the summer, the wind farm will start to produce its first electricity and we expect that all 25 wind turbines will be generating clean, green electricity in the final quarter of 2009."

Rhyl Flats is Wales' second offshore windfarm after North Hoyle, a 60 MW farm constructed in 2003. It was the U.K.'s first major offshore wind facility. RWE Innogy has been busy over the past year in the U.K. renewable market, and in December 2008 was given the green light to build and operate the massive 750-MW windfarm at Gwynt y Mor off the North Wales coast, one of the world's largest.