Hornsea Wind Farm is a

Round 3 wind farm The United Kingdom is the best location for wind power in Europe and one of the best in the world. By 2022, the UK had over 11 thousand wind turbines with a total installed capacity of over 25 gigawatts (GW): 14 GW onshore and 11 GW offshore ...

which began construction in 2018. Sited in the

North Sea The North Sea lies between Great Britain, Norway, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium. An epeiric sea on the European continental shelf, it connects to the Atlantic Ocean through the English Channel in the south and the Norwegian ...

off the east coast of

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...

, the eventual wind farm group is planned to have a total capacity of up to 6

gigawatt The watt (symbol: W) is the unit of power or radiant flux in the International System of Units (SI), equal to 1 joule per second or 1 kg⋅m2⋅s−3. It is used to quantify the rate of energy transfer. The watt is named after James Wat ...

(GW). The development has been split into a number of subzones. The 1.2 GW Project 1 gained planning consent in 2014. Construction of Hornsea One started in January 2018, and the first turbines began supplying power to the UK national electricity grid in February 2019. The turbines were all installed by October 2019 and the equipment fully commissioned in December 2019. With a capacity of 1,218 MW, it was the largest in the world on its completion. A second 1.4 GW Project 2 was given planning consent in 2016. First power was achieved in December 2021, and it became fully operational in August 2022 overtaking Hornsea One as the largest offshore wind farm in the world. In 2016 a third subzone was split into two projects Hornsea 3 and 4, with approximate capacities of 1–2 GW and 1 GW, increasing the capacity of the developed project to a maximum of 6 GW.

History

The tendering process for

Round 3 ''Round 3'' is Kim Hyun-joong's third Korean mini-album, which was released on July 22, 2013. Background and development Two days after the "2013 KHJ Show - Party People" fanmeeting in Seoul, Korea, KeyEast stated that Kim would be releasing hi ...

offshore wind farm opportunities was begun by the

Crown Estate The Crown Estate is a collection of lands and holdings in the United Kingdom belonging to the British monarch as a corporation sole, making it "the sovereign's public estate", which is neither government property nor part of the monarch's priv ...

in 2008. Bids were received in March 2009, and Zone Development Agreements signed in December 2009. The Hornsea development zone was awarded to a joint venture (SMart Wind) of

Siemens Siemens AG ( ) is a German multinational conglomerate corporation and the largest industrial manufacturing company in Europe headquartered in Munich with branch offices abroad. The principal divisions of the corporation are ''Industry'', ''E ...

and a consortium ''Mainstream Renewable Power'' including

Hochtief Hochtief AG is a German construction company based in Essen, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. The Hornsea site is one of three off the British coast in the

, roughly halfway between the other two: Dogger Bank Wind Farm and East Anglia Wind Farm. The Hornsea site ('Zone 4', also known as 'Holderness' zone) has a total area of , and is from land at the closest point; water depth in the zone is from , with a tidal range of , and typical annual wave height of . The surface of the seabed consists primarily of sands and gravel. In 2011 the Danish firm Ørsted A/S (then named DONG Energy) became a partner in SMart Wind. In early 2015 Ørsted A/S became the 100% owner of the first phase, Project 1, of the scheme. Ørsted acquired rights to the remaining subzones of the Hornsea development (2 & 3) by August 2015. In 2016 Ørsted reached an agreement with the Crown Estate for amended plans for the Hornsea Two and Hornsea Three phases. Hornsea Three was split into two new projects, Hornsea Three and Hornsea Four; the new phases were expected to be developed in the 2020s. The changes increased the potential generating capacity of the wind farm to 6 GW, with Hornsea Three estimated at 1–2 GW and Hornsea Four at about 1 GW.

Hornsea Project 1

The initial scoping report for "Project One" within the Hornsea zone identified it as a subzone of in the centre of the Hornsea zone, with an estimated potential wind farm of 1.2 GW, divided into two further subzones of 600 MW capacity each. The zone was to connect to an existing 400 kV National Grid substation at Killingholme. A variety of configurations were considered – foundations of pile jacket, monopile or gravity base; turbines from 3.6 to 8 MW rated power; with electrical power export by

HVDC A high-voltage direct current (HVDC) electric power transmission system (also called a power superhighway or an electrical superhighway) uses direct current (DC) for electric power transmission, in contrast with the more common alternating curre ...

. Later DONG Energy added the consideration to use

HVAC Heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) is the use of various technologies to control the temperature, humidity, and purity of the air in an enclosed space. Its goal is to provide thermal comfort and acceptable indoor air quality. ...

export cables. The chosen cable export was planned to make landfall at Horseshoe Point (northeast of

Marshchapel Marshchapel is a coastal village and civil parish in the East Lindsey district of Lincolnshire, England. It is approximately south-east from Grimsby and north-east from Louth. It includes the hamlets of West End and Eskham. Marshchapel has ...

East Lindsey East Lindsey is a local government district in Lincolnshire, England. The population of the district council was 136,401 at the 2011 census. The council is based in Manby. Other major settlements in the district include Alford, Wragby, Spils ...

), then passing west and northwest to a substation near Killingholme Power Station, North Killingholme in

North Lincolnshire North Lincolnshire is a unitary authority area in Lincolnshire, England, with a population of 167,446 in the 2011 census. The borough includes the towns of Scunthorpe, Brigg, Haxey, Crowle, Epworth, Bottesford, Kirton in Lindsey and Bar ...

. Within the zone of Project 1 the primary underlying geology consisted of deposits from the Quaternary Period consisting of Bolders bank, Botney Cut and Eem formations – primarily sediments or tills – gravelley/sandy clays, overlying sediments were sands or gravels up to thick, with waves within the area varying in height by . Project 1 water depths were generally . In 2011 Smart Wind signed lease agreements with the Crown Estate for "Heron Wind" and "Njord" areas making up the zone. The zone was given provisional contract for difference renewable subsidies by the UK government in April 2014. Hornsea Project 1 was given planning consent in December 2014. The 'contract for difference'

strike price In finance, the strike price (or exercise price) of an option is a fixed price at which the owner of the option can buy (in the case of a call), or sell (in the case of a put), the underlying security or commodity. The strike price may be set ...

was £140 per MWh. In early 2015 DONG acquired all of the project, becoming 100% owner. Seabed investigation including boreholes at turbine foundation positions was completed by Fugro by April 2015. In mid 2015 DONG selected

Siemens Wind Power Siemens AG ( ) is a German multinational conglomerate corporation and the largest industrial manufacturing company in Europe headquartered in Munich with branch offices abroad. The principal divisions of the corporation are ''Industry'', ''E ...

7 MW turbines with rotor turbines for the project – around 171 turbines would be used for the wind farm. In its 2015 financial report DONG stated it had chosen to use suction bucket foundations on a third of the turbines at Hornsea. The rationale for use of the new foundation type is thought to be a simplified foundation installation, requiring only a heavy-lift crane to lower the foundation to the sea bed, reducing costs. DONG Energy formally committed to building the wind farm in early 2016. The expected completion date for the project was 2020. A £25 million contract to construct the onshore substation at North Killingholme had been awarded to

Balfour Beatty Balfour Beatty plc () is an international infrastructure group based in the United Kingdom with capabilities in construction services, support services and infrastructure investments. A constituent of the FTSE 250 Index, Balfour Beatty works acr ...

in late 2015. NKT Cables and ABB were awarded €139 (c. $158) million and $250 million contracts to supply 220 kV AC export cables in March/April 2016. In late 2016 JDR Cables was contracted to supply of inter-array subsea power cables for the wind farm;

Nexans Nexans S.A. is a global company in the cable and optical fiber industry headquartered in Paris, France. The group is active in four main business areas: buildings and territories (construction, local infrastructure, smart cities / grids, e-mo ...

was awarded a contract for of inter-array cables; and EEW was awarded a contract to supply 116 monopiles.

Bladt Industries Bladt Industries A/S is an international steel contractor specialising in large-scale and highly complex steel structures. Bladt Industries operate within three key areas of business providing steel solutions for the wind and renewable energy sec ...

/ Offshore Structures (Britain) Ltd. was awarded a contract for 96 tower transition pieces in early 2017, to be constructed at

Aalborg Aalborg (, , ) is Denmark's List of cities in Denmark by population, fourth largest town (behind Copenhagen, Aarhus, and Odense) with a population of 119,862 (1 July 2022) in the town proper and an Urban area, urban population of 143,598 (1 July ...

, Denmark and

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, UK.

Construction

Construction of the onshore cable route was begun in late 2016 under J. Murphy & Sons. The wind farm was scheduled to be constructed between 2018 and 2020, and expected to provide an annual production of around 4.1

terawatt-hour A kilowatt-hour ( unit symbol: kW⋅h or kW h; commonly written as kWh) is a unit of energy: one kilowatt of power for one hour. In terms of SI derived units with special names, it equals 3.6 megajoules (MJ). Kilowatt-hours are a common b ...

s (TWh). The first foundation of the new windpark was installed by DEME Group's subsidiary GeoSea in January 2018. The export cables were installed by Tideway Offshore Solutions, a subsidiary company of the Belgian DEME Group. The installation was completed in December 2018, several months ahead of schedule. Hornsea 1 began supplying power to the UK national electricity grid in February 2019, with full completion expected in the first quarter of 2020. The final monopile foundation was completed in April 2019 and as of 3 May 2019, 28 turbines out of 174 had been installed. The final turbine was installed in October 2019 and the project was completed in early 2020.

Events

In 2019 the failure of the plant was partially responsible for a large scale nationwide power cut on the evening of 9 August. At 16:52:33 on Friday 9 August 2019,

lightning Lightning is a naturally occurring electrostatic discharge during which two electrically charged regions, both in the atmosphere or with one on the ground, temporarily neutralize themselves, causing the instantaneous release of an average ...

struck a 400 kV mainland transmission line between Eaton Socon and

Wymondley Wymondley is a civil parish in Hertfordshire, England. The parish was created on 1 April 1937 as a merger of the two former parishes of Great Wymondley and Little Wymondley. Prior to the creation of North Hertfordshire in 1974, Wymondley was ...

north of London, causing small generators,

Little Barford Power Station Little Barford Power Station is a gas-fired power station just north of the village of Little Barford (close to St Neots) in Bedfordshire, England. It lies just south of the A428 St Neots bypass and east of the Wyboston Leisure Park. The Riv ...

(641 MW) and Hornsea (737 MW) to unexpectedly disconnect a combined 1,878 MW (1,691 MW maximum single-time) supply within minutes, greater than the 1,000 MW limit. Grid frequency declined, initially below the 'exceptional circumstances' limit at 49.5 Hz, triggering additional generation and then more importantly below 48.8 Hz at which point the first stage of ‘Low Frequency Demand Disconnection’ (LFDD) a form of automatic load shedding commences to stabilise the grid. As part of this 1.1 million customers were disconnected; rail services were disrupted with 371 trains cancelled, 220 part cancelled, and 873 trains delayed. Power was restored at 17:37. Hornsea disconnected due to a software flaw, which was fixed the next day.

Hornsea Project 2

A scoping report for "Project Two" was published in October 2012. The subzone was expected to be developed in a number of phases, with a potential wind turbine capacity of 1.8 GW, in an area of around located in the centre of the Hornsea wind farm zone. Project 2 was use the same route for its electrical export cable as Project One, and to use either HVAC or HVDC with a separate onshore substation. Suitable areas for the Project 2 development were identified as being adjacent to the north, east or west of the Zone 1, which was located in the shallowest area of the whole Hornsea zone. The design considered piled, suction pile, monopile or gravity base foundations for wind turbines of 5 to 15 MW rated power. As with Project 1 sea bed conditions and geology consisted of Quaternary period deposits, primarily sediments of sand, till and clays, with the overlying gravel or sand seabed including sandwaves, with the average water depth of . In 2013 SMart wind signed lease agreements with the Crown Estate for the "Optimus Wind" and "Breesea" areas making up Project 2 of Hornsea wind farm. A planning application for Project 2 was submitted and accepted for examination in early 2015; its wind turbine area was located adjacent northwest of the Project 1 area, with the cable export route following that of Project 1 adjacent on the northward side. Planning permission for the development was awarded in August 2016, for 300 turbines covering at a height of each. At the time of the award, Dong had committed to building 174 turbines, but the whole project is the biggest marine wind farm in the world. The inter-array cables were supplied by JDR Cable Systems, installed by Seaway 7, and operate at 66 kV.

Construction

By the time construction commenced in 2020, the selected area was to the east and north of Hornsea One and the specification had been set as 165 8 MW turbines giving a rated capacity of 1.4 GW. As of April 2021, a third of the turbine foundations had been installed and the remaining turbines are set to be installed during the second half of 2021. The first turbine was in place by the end of May 2021, and on 23 June 2021 Ørsted announced that the 16th turbine to be added to the Hornsea Two array was the 1,000th turbine they had installed in UK waters, fifteen years after they installed their first, which was part of the 30-turbine Barrow Offshore Wind Farm, off the coast of Cumbria. Hornsea Two has two diesel-electric crew ships. Having completed the offshore substation, first power was achieved by 20 December 2021, and became fully operational in August 2022. By doing so, Hornsea Project 2 overtook Hornsea One as the largest offshore wind farm in the world.

Hornsea Project 3

DONG Energy (which in November 2017 changed its name to Ørsted) began consultation on the project three development in May 2016. Project 3 will be to the east of Projects 1 and 2, with an estimated maximum capacity of 2.4 GW over . Ørsted submitted a Development consent application in 2018 and consent was granted on 31 December 2020. The project is expected to begin construction in 2022, and be completed by 2025.

Environmental impact

Concerns have been raised by the

RSPB The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) is a charitable organisation registered in England and Wales and in Scotland. It was founded in 1889. It works to promote conservation and protection of birds and the wider environment th ...

over the impact on bird colonies in the region.

Hornsea Project 4

Ørsted put forward a plan to add a fourth area to the Hornsea wind farm in 2018, with the area covering , and being located adjacent, north-west of Hornsea Project 1. During 2018 and 2019, consultation with the local communities which will be affected by the project occurred, with a Development Consent Order application originally intended in the first quarter of 2020. However additional consultations and revisions delayed the submission until September 2021, with further analysis needed on the impacts to kittiwake,

razorbill The razorbill, razor-billed auk, or lesser auk (''Alca torda'') is a colonial seabird and the only extant member of the genus '' Alca'' of the family Alcidae, the auks. It is the closest living relative of the extinct great auk (''Pinguinis im ...

and

guillemot Guillemot is the common name for several species of seabird in the Alcidae or auk family (part of the order Charadriiformes). In British use, the term comprises two genera: ''Uria'' and ''Cepphus''. In North America the ''Uria'' species are ...

populations in the Flamborough and Filey Coast Special Protection Area. Part of the site is also scheduled for an underground carbon dioxide storage, leading to conflict over the use of the seabed and the ocean surface. Construction of the wind farm was provisionally expected to start in 2023, and be operational by 2027, at the earliest. The project's capacity is unknown by Ørsted due to the ever increasing size of available wind turbines for the project.

Notes

References

Sources

* * * ;Zone 1 * ** ** ** ;Zone 2 * ** **

External links

* * * * {{Electricity generation in Yorkshire and the Humber Proposed wind farms in England Offshore wind farms in the North Sea Round 3 offshore wind farms Ørsted (company) wind farms Hornsea 2018 establishments in England Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects (United Kingdom) Energy infrastructure completed in 2021

History

Hornsea Project 1

Construction

Events

Hornsea Project 2

Construction

Hornsea Project 3

Environmental impact

Hornsea Project 4

See also

Notes

References

Sources

External links