The Barrow Offshore Wind Farm is a 30 turbine 90MW capacity offshore

wind farm A wind farm or wind park, also called a wind power station or wind power plant, is a group of wind turbines in the same location used to produce electricity. Wind farms vary in size from a small number of turbines to several hundred wind tur ...

in the East Irish Sea approximately south west of

Walney Island Walney Island, also known as the Isle of Walney, is an island off the west coast of England, at the western end of Morecambe Bay in the Irish Sea. It is part of Barrow-in-Furness, separated from the mainland by Walney Channel, which is spanned ...

, near

Barrow-in-Furness Barrow-in-Furness is a port town in Cumbria, England. Historically in Lancashire, it was incorporated as a municipal borough in 1867 and merged with Dalton-in-Furness Urban District in 1974 to form the Borough of Barrow-in-Furness. In 202 ...

, Cumbria, England. Construction of the wind farm took place between 2005 and 2006. The farm is operated by Barrow Offshore Wind Limited, owned by Ørsted A/S.

Planning and design

Barrow wind farm was a UK Round 1 wind farm development originally developed by

Warwick Energy Limited Warwick ( ) is a market town, civil parish and the county town of Warwickshire in the Warwick District in England, adjacent to the River Avon. It is south of Coventry, and south-east of Birmingham. It is adjoined with Leamington Spa and Whit ...

. Barrow (4C Offshore) ''Developers/Owners/Operators'' A planning application was submitted in 2001, and planning consent given in March 2003; the project was sold to

Centrica Centrica plc is a British multinational energy and services company with its headquarters in Windsor, Berkshire. Its principal activity is the supply of electricity and gas to consumers in the United Kingdom and Ireland. It is the largest ...

(25%, c.£22.5million), Ørsted A/S (then named DONG Energy) (37.5%), and

Statkraft Statkraft AS is a hydropower company, fully owned by the Norwegian state. The Statkraft Group is a generator of renewable energy, as well as Norway’s largest and the Nordic region's third largest energy producer. Statkraft develops and generate ...

(37.5%) in Sep. 2003. The estimated cost of developing the project was £100million, of which £10million was provided by a UK government grant. In 2004 Centrica and Ørsted bought the Statkraft stake, forming a 50:50 joint venture in the development. The initial Warwick Energy proposal was for a 30 turbine wind farm 7 km southwest of

(Cumbria), with a generating capacity of up to 108MW; electrical power supply to the mainland was to be via a ~25 km long 132kV cable making groundfall near

Heysham Heysham ( ) is a coastal town in Lancashire, England, overlooking Morecambe Bay. It is a ferry port, with services to the Isle of Man and Ireland, and the site of two nuclear power stations. Demography Administratively, Heysham is part of the ...

, with connection to the mainland electrical grid at an extension to an existing electricity substation south of

Heysham nuclear power station Heysham nuclear power station is operated by EDF Energy in Heysham, Lancashire, England. The site is divided into two separately-managed nuclear power stations, Heysham 1 and Heysham 2, both with two reactors of the advanced gas-cooled reactor ...

. Turbines were expected to have ~50m radius blades, with a 75m hub height, and be in water at a depth of ~20m, with a ~32.5m sub-sea bed monopile foundation; the turbines were to be spaced approximately 500m apart in four rows aligned to face the prevailing southwesterly winds, with a row spacing of ~750m.

Construction

In July 2004 Kellogg Brown & Root Ltd and Vestas-Celtic Wind Technology Ltd were awarded the contract to install and commission the wind farm, and to operate the wind farm for 5 years. A 30 turbine wind farm with a capacity of 90MW was constructed by the consortium between July 2005 and May 2006. The main construction base was at

Harland and Wolff Harland & Wolff is a British shipbuilding company based in Belfast, Northern Ireland. It specialises in ship repair, shipbuilding and offshore construction. Harland & Wolff is famous for having built the majority of the ocean liners for the ...

's shipyard in Belfast. In exceptions where pile driving of monopile foundations failed, drilling was used to form the monopile foundations. IEC 1A class Vestas V90-3.0MW wind turbines were used, mounted on a 75m tower connected to monopiles supplied by a Sif/Smulders joint venture. Turbine to offshore substation electric connection were at 33kV, with the voltage stepped up to 132kV at an offshore substation supplied by Areva T&D (transformer), Sif/Smulders (superstructure and monopile) and designed by

KBR KBR can stand for: * KBR (company), formerly Kellogg, Brown & Root, US * KBR (news agency), an Indonesian radio news agency * KBR Park, Hyderabad, India * Kafa language, spoken in Ethiopia * Key-based routing in computer networking * Potassium brom ...

and

Mott MacDonald The Mott MacDonald Group is a consultancy headquartered in the United Kingdom. It employs 16,000 staff in 150 countries. Mott MacDonald is one of the largest employee-owned companies in the world. It was established in 1989 by the merger of ...

. Cables were supplied by

Prysmian Prysmian S.p.A. is an Italian company with headquarters in Milan, specialising in the production of electrical cable for use in the energy and telecom sectors and for optical fibres. Prysmian is present in North America with 23 plants, 48 in Eur ...

(33kV) and

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 ...

(132kV). Construction of the wind farm was completed in June 2006 with the first power generated in March 2006. The operator is ''Barrow Offshore Wind Limited'', owned by Centrica and Ørsted.

Operation

Since 2008 (to 2012) the farm operated at between 30 and 40%

capacity factor The net capacity factor is the unitless ratio of actual electrical energy output over a given period of time to the theoretical maximum electrical energy output over that period. The theoretical maximum energy output of a given installation is def ...

, generating between 240 and 320 GWh of electrical energy per year. Its

levelised cost The levelized cost of electricity (LCOE), or levelized cost of energy, is a measure of the average net present cost of electricity generation for a generator over its lifetime. It is used for investment planning and to compare different methods ...

has been estimated at £87/MWh. In 2011 regulatory changes required Ørsted/Centrica to divest the electrical transmission assets of the wind farm, which were sold to TC Barrow OFTO Ltd. for £34 million. In 2014 Ørsted acquired Centrica's 50% holding in the wind farm.

References

Sources

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External links

* {{Authority control Offshore wind farms in the Irish Sea Wind farms in England Ørsted (company) wind farms Buildings and structures in Cumbria

Offshore Wind Farm Offshore wind power or offshore wind energy is the generation of electricity through wind farms in bodies of water, usually at sea. There are higher wind speeds offshore than on land, so offshore farms generate more electricity per amount of c ...