Swedish energy giant Vattenfall and Stadtwerke München (SWM) have inaugurated its 288MW Sandbank offshore wind farm.
The offshore wind farm located 90km west of Island of Sylt, is expected to generate enough clean electricity to power about 400,000 German households.
Sandbank is the second offshore wind farm to have been inaugurated by the duo Vattenfall and Stadtwerke München, with the first being Dan Tysk. Both the wind farms generate 576MW of clean energy.
The offshore wind farm’s construction began in the summer of 2015. It has a total of 72 turbines, each producing about 4MW of electricity. The turbines were supplied by Siemens. Each of the turbines is installed on a monopile structure, reaching depths between 26m – 34m.
The hub height of each turbine is 94.7m and the total turbine height is about 160m. The wind farm is spread across in an area of 47km2.
Now that the wind farm is operational, it is expected that it can offset about 410,000 tonnes of CO2 and 10000 tonnes of SO2 annually.
Vattenfall Senior Vice President and Business Area Wind Head Gunnar Groebler said: “It is our ambition to power climate smarter living and to become CO2 free in one generation.
“I think the start of Sandbank is a further proof to Vattenfall´s strategy of continuing to push the transformation of our production portfolio towards renewable energies.”
Stadtwerke München CEO Florian Bieberbach said: "Sandbank is another major project of our Renewable Energies Expansion Campaign. It brings us a great step closer to our goal of 100 percent green electricity for Munich by 2025.
“I would like to thank all those who have contributed to the development of this powerful eco-power plant.”
Recently, Vattenfall had inaugurated the 54.5MW Ray wind farm Northumberland, UK. The wind farm could power about 30,000 UK households. The wind farm has 16 turbines in total.