World’s Second Largest Offshore Wind Farm Up And Running In The UK

Business Green reports that UK’s Greater Gabbard wind farm off the coast of Suffolk has now been officially opened. The new offshore windfarm is made up of 140 wind turbines capable of generating an average of 1750 GWh of electricity a year, enough to power 450,000 homes. This makes the project the world’s second largest offshore wind farm and the project provides 14% of the UK’s offshore wind farm electric generation capacity.

The wind farm is located 12 miles from the shoreline of Suffolk. The project is expected to be extended and will reportedly double in size by 2017 under the planned Galloper wind farm extension. The total cost of the project is £1.3 billion and was jointly developed by SSE renewables and RWE npower renewables. The world’s largest offshore wind farm in the world is located in the Thames estuary and is called the London Array.

Despite all the positives surrounding this new opening the UK government still faces criticisms about its commitments to carbon-neutral electricity generation. Business Green states that:

“The government has faced criticism over the extent to which foreign companies have supplied the turbines for the UK’s offshore wind farms and led the development of new projects. The industry has repeatedly warned that without stronger reassurances that the market will continue to develop post 2020 manufacturers will remain reluctant to locate manufacturing plants in the UK, arguing that the government should introduce a decarbonisation target for the power sector for 2030 and sign up to post-2020 EU renewables targets.”

Image courtesy of Business Green