Riffgat offshore wind farm

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"Riffgat" offshore wind farm
ENOVA offshore wind farm Riffgat1.jpg
location
Riffgat offshore wind farm (North Sea)
Riffgat offshore wind farm
Coordinates 53 ° 41 '24 "  N , 6 ° 28' 48"  E Coordinates: 53 ° 41 '24 "  N , 6 ° 28' 48"  E
country Lower SaxonyLower Saxony Lower Saxony
Waters North Sea
Data
Type Offshore wind farm
Primary energy Wind energy
power 113.4 MW
owner 99.58% EWE
0.42% ENOVA
operator Offshore wind farm Riffgat GmbH & Co. KG
Project start 2011
Start of operations 12th of February 2014
founding Monopiles
turbine 30 × Siemens SWT-3.6-120
Energy fed in per year 474 GWh
Website https://www.riffgat.de/
was standing 2020
f2
Location of Riffgat within the wind farms in the German Bight

Riffgat is the name of an offshore wind farm 15 kilometers northwest of the island of Borkum , north of the shipping route of the same name in the southern North Sea . The wind farm was inaugurated on August 10, 2013 after a construction period of 14 months and went into operation on February 12, 2014.

General

The Oldenburg energy supply company EWE and ENOVA from Bunderhee jointly invested in the wind farm and operate it through the offshore wind farm Riffgat GmbH & Co. KG . The wind farm consists of 30  wind turbines of the type Siemens SWT 3.6-120 with a rated power of a total of 113.4 MW . The standard energy capacity of 474 gigawatt hours can produce electricity for around 120,000 households. The wind farm covers an area of ​​six square kilometers.

After a regional planning procedure and an environmental impact assessment had been carried out , the Oldenburg Trade Supervisory Office approved the construction and operation of the wind farm on the basis of the Federal Immission Control Act on September 29, 2010 . The island community of Borkum sued the preliminary ruling of January 22, 2008. The action was dismissed as inadmissible due to a lack of legal standing .

According to the planning for 2011, the investment volume is around 480 million euros . Technical requirements for the plant foundations but also territorial issues delayed the start of construction planned for 2011. The construction work was originally supposed to be completed by the end of 2012. Construction on site finally began in May 2012.

The wind farm was completed in August 2013, but a piece of submarine cable was still missing from the grid connection to the mainland.

Location

Riffgat offshore wind farm, view from Borkum's north beach

The Riffgat offshore wind farm is located around four kilometers south of the Terschelling - German Bight traffic separation area , around four kilometers west of the border with the Lower Saxony Wadden Sea National Park and a good 15 kilometers northwest of the island of Borkum .

The wind farm is located within the twelve-mile zone , so the responsibility of the federal state of Lower Saxony applies . The wind farm is located in the potential suitable areas for offshore wind energy use, which the state of Lower Saxony has identified in its "Action Program for Offshore Wind Energy Use" and directly north of the Borkum Riff nature reserve proclaimed by the state of Lower Saxony .

Construction progress

At the beginning of 2012, the construction area was examined for ammunition and warfare agents from the Second World War sunk here . Numerous measuring devices were on display. In May 2012, a 500-meter safety zone was set up around the intended locations of the wind turbines and secured with six cardinal barrels so that the foundations could begin. Up until June 8, 2012, so-called scour protection measures were carried out by heaping coarse gravel through the special ship Rolling Stone .

From June 15, 2012 to the beginning of September 2012, the crane ship Oleg Strashnov erected the 30 approximately 70 m long foundation elements ( monopiles ) and the intermediate pieces, and the cable laying work within the park had already started.

In February 2013, the “Riffgat” transformer platform, manufactured in the Netherlands, was installed in the wind farm. From the beginning of May 2013, the 30 wind turbines manufactured in Denmark were fetched from Esbjerg by the Norwegian installation ship Bold Tern and placed on the foundations in the construction site. Half of the 30 wind turbines had been installed by June 24, 2013, the rest followed in summer 2013. The completion of construction was celebrated in Norddeich on August 10, 2013 with Lower Saxony's Prime Minister Stephan Weil and Economics Minister Olaf Lies .

On July 13, 2013, a 26-year-old English diver had a fatal accident while working to attach a cable to the seabed.

Network connection and delay

Riffgat with the transformer platform

The 30 wind turbines are connected by medium voltage cables to a transformer platform in the wind farm, which transforms the electricity to a high voltage of 155 kV. From there, the electricity is conducted to the Emden / Borssum substation (near Borssum ) via an 80 km long external connection (50 km of which are submarine cables and 30 km of underground cables ) . It is fed into the public power grid of the transmission system operator Tennet TSO . Due to the relatively short distance to the grid connection point, the grid connection can be made using conventional three-phase technology. The technically complex installation of a high-voltage direct current transmission (HVDC) was not economically efficient.

The submarine cable route to the landing point northwest of Pilsum was approved by the Lower Saxony state authority for road construction and transport with a plan approval decision of June 28, 2011 . In order to be able to lay the submarine cable to the mainland, investigations took place in 2012 on the planned cable route. Much more ammunition and ordnance were found than expected. The submarine cable to be laid extends National Park Wadden Sea in the area of Osterems - fairway . It was only reported at the beginning of September 2013 that the ammunition remains had apparently been cleared by the responsible ordnance disposal service and that the remaining piece of cable could be laid. On February 12, 2014, the Riffgat grid connection finally went into operation and transported wind power from the sea to land. The wind turbines were now put into operation piece by piece.

In the meantime, the wind turbines could not produce any electricity despite being operational and instead had to be supplied with electricity from diesel generators . Compensation payments to the wind farm operator are added to the electricity price in Germany via the offshore grid levy . The wind farm received media attention as a result of the delay.

At the end of November 2015 there was another defect in the submarine cable so that the wind farm was not supplying any electricity. The location was located, but to repair the damage, the area around it had to be examined for remains of ordnance. On May 12, 2016, the infeed was released again after repairs.

Border question

The wind farm was built in an area that Germany claims for itself. However, the Netherlands also claim part of the area for themselves. Therefore, the construction was also connected to the German-Dutch border issue . The course of the border between the two states at the mouth of the Ems is regulated by the "Ems-Dollart Treaty" of 1960, but not finally clarified. The wind farm was built in the outer estuary of the Ems , there too there is a German and a Dutch conception of the border. On October 24, 2014, an international treaty was signed by the Foreign Ministers of the Federal Republic of Germany and the Netherlands, the ratification of which was completed in June 2016.

The project was approved by the German side ( State of Lower Saxony ).

See also

Web links

Commons : Riffgat  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Riffgat: 108 megawatts for the energy transition. EWE , August 10, 2013, accessed on April 19, 2020 .
  2. ↑ a b c The problem wind farm is finally going online. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , February 12, 2014, accessed on February 12, 2014 .
  3. ↑ Building permit granted for offshore wind farm Riffgat. In: iwr.de. September 29, 2010, accessed April 19, 2020 .
  4. ↑ Administrative Court Oldenburg , judgment of December 11, 2008, 5 A 2653/08
  5. ^ WSA Emden, Announcements for Seafarers 71/12 of May 23, 2012 ( Memento of March 7, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  6. ↑ Karsten Krogmann: The construction site right behind the buoy. Nordwest-Zeitung , June 12, 2012, accessed June 19, 2012 .
  7. ↑ Foundations for offshore wind farm "Riffgat" are in place. In: business-on.de. September 6, 2012, accessed September 6, 2012 .
  8. ↑ Riffgat offshore wind farm gets its centerpiece . Riffgat press release dated February 17, 2013, accessed April 22, 2013
  9. ↑ First installation of "Riffgat" installed . In: Daily port report of May 7, 2013, p. 4.
  10. ↑ Halfway through the construction of the Riffgat wind farm . In: Daily port report from June 25, 2013, p. 4.
  11. ↑ Diver dies on the Riffgat construction site. Nordwest-Zeitung , July 15, 2013, accessed on February 12, 2016 .
  12. ↑ Riffgat - three-phase network connection off the coast of Borkum. Tennet TSO , accessed April 19, 2020 .
  13. ↑ Plan approval decision. (PDF) for the grid connection of the offshore wind turbine Riffgat by means of a 155kV AC line from TenneT TSO GmbH. Lower Saxony State Authority for Road Construction and Transport , June 28, 2011, accessed on April 19, 2020 .
  14. ^ Anne-Katrin Wehrmann: New dangers from old ammunition on the bottom of the North and Baltic Seas . In: Hansa , issue 2/2013, pp. 32/33
  15. ^ WSA Emden, Announcements for Seafarers (T) 137/12 of August 22, 2012 ( Memento of February 27, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  16. ^ Peter Kleinort: Clear the way for Riffgat cables . In: Daily port report of September 9, 2013, p. 16
  17. ↑ A wind farm that consumes electricity and eats diesel. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , August 9, 2013, accessed on April 19, 2020 .
  18. ↑ Wolfhart Fabarius: “Riffgat” does not supply any electricity · Cable defective · Sea area must be examined more closely . In: Daily port report of February 5, 2016, p. 4
  19. ↑ Riffgat supplies electricity again. Nordwest-Zeitung , June 9, 2016, accessed April 19, 2020 .
  20. ↑ Documentation of the legislative procedure. In: ID: 18-71256. German Bundestag, June 10, 2016, accessed on September 2, 2017 .