Kentish Flats Extension Starts Generating Power
The completion of the Kentish Flats Extension is in sight after the offshore project began generating electricity for the first time this past weekend.
Vattenfall, the Swedish state-owned European energy developer behind the project, which is being developed off the coast of Kent, England, announced on Monday that the extension produced its first power for England’s National Grid on Saturday the 29th of August, at 14:05, from turbine number KE02.
The original Kentish Flats offshore wind farm was completed in 2005, and consists of 30 Vestas 3 MW turbines creating a combined capacity of 90 MW. The new extension, which began construction in May of this year and is expected to be completed in early autumn, will add another 49.5 MW to the project. In turn, this pushes Vattenfall’s own fleet of European offshore wind projects up to 800 MW in capacity.
“We’ve made excellent progress so far,” said Matthew Green, the Project Manager for the construction of the Kentish Flats Extension (KFE). “I can’t help feeling some pride in producing low carbon power for the first time and exporting to the grid from the MHI Vestas turbines. Our focus is now to continue working safely and get the remaining 14 turbines at Kentish Flats Extension generating green power as quickly as possible.”
“Kentish Flats Extension has an excellent safety record, is on schedule and on budget,” added Gunnar Groebler, Head of Vattenfall’s Wind business. “Importantly, as we grow Vattenfall’s offshore wind capacity we deploy new ideas and learn more about engineering in this challenging environment. We can see these efforts are constantly reducing the cost of offshore wind power.”
Image Credit: via Vattenfall
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