Lincs offshore wind farm: mission complete

The team behind Centrica Energy's Lincs offshore wind farm are celebrating the completion of the final stage in construction for the 75-turbine project.

The team behind Centrica Energy’s Lincs offshore wind farm are celebrating the completion of the final stage in construction for the 75-turbine project.

Commissioning of the 270MW wind farm drew to a close yesterday (Wednesday) marking the culmination of over three years work since the start of construction in 2010.

Lincs Project Director Patrick Harnett said: “Commissioning is the final milestone in the completion of a project so it’s a great achievement for the team.

“The offshore environment brings with it a variety of challenges not least of all with the weather, which has thrown pretty much everything at us. There’ve been times over the winter when it felt like we were all working on ‘mission impossible’ but it’s been a great summer and the team have made a sterling effort to get us to where we are today.

“It gives me great pleasure to say this truly is mission complete for the Lincs construction and the start of a new chapter as a major generator of clean, renewable energy for the UK.”

Lincs has achieved in excess of 99% availability throughout the final performance testing phase.

Managing Director of Centrica Energy’s Power Generation business, Simon Merriweather said: “I’d like to congratulate everyone involved with the Lincs construction on this significant achievement. Hopefully the outcome of the current Government policy review will give us the opportunity to celebrate many more such successes.”

The Lincs wind farm is capable of producing enough clean renewable energy for over 200,000 homes – equivalent to around two thirds of the homes in Lincolnshire – and was officially opened in August by the Deputy Prime Minister.

The site is managed from Centrica Energy’s Operations & Maintenance base in Grimsby, which serves as a shared resource for the Lincs, Lynn and Inner Dowsing wind farms. The base also includes the Siemens service team.

Lincs is a joint venture between leading UK energy company Centrica Energy, offshore wind market leader DONG Energy and Siemens Project Ventures.

Notes

MISSION: Lincs offshore wind farm

STATUS: Complete

START OF CONSTRUCTION: March 2010

FIRST POWER: August 2012

LAST TURBINE INSTALLED: March 2013

LOCATION: 8 kilometres (5 miles) off the coast of Skegness

About the turbines

  • Diameter of the blades 120m
  • Weight of blades 18 tonnes
  • Length of blades 58.5m
  • Weight of turbine 474 tonnes
  • Total height 145m

Some construction facts

  • 3.5 million man hours
  • 185 kilometres of subsea cable
  • 115,000 tonnes of steel
  • 71,000 tonnes of turbine components
  • 63,000 meals served on the installation vessel, MPI Resolution

 

Centrica Energy

Centrica is a top 30 FTSE 100 integrated energy company and a leading developer of offshore wind farms in the UK. For more information, go to www.centricaenergy.com

Lincs is the third of Centrica’s wind farms to be built in the Greater Wash. The existing Lynn and Inner Dowsing wind farms have a combined capacity of 194MW, providing enough power to meet the annual demands of more than 130,000 homes.

 

DONG Energy

DONG Energy is one of the leading energy groups in Northern Europe. Our business is based on procuring, producing, distributing and trading in energy and related products in Northern Europe. DONG Energy has 7,000 employees and is headquartered in Denmark. The Group generated DKK 67 billion (EUR 9.0 billion) in revenue in 2012. For further information, go to www.dongenergy.com

 

Siemens Project Ventures

The Financial Services unit of Siemens (SFS) is an international provider of business-to-business financial solutions. SFS helps facilitate investments, providing commercial finance, project and structured finance with specific asset expertise in the energy, healthcare, industry, and infrastructure & cities markets.

Siemens scope of service on the Lincs Wind Farm includes the supply, installation and commissioning of 75 SWT 3.6MW wind turbine generators, the design and installation of the grid connections, and the provision of operations and maintenance services from the Siemens Service Renewables team, which includes 35 service technicians. For more information, visit: www.siemens.com/finance