BORKUM/HAMBURG (dpa-AFX) - Wind farm operator Ørsted has largely completed construction work on its new offshore wind farm Riffgrund 3 in the German North Sea. The last of a total of 83 wind turbines has been installed, as the company announced in Hamburg.

The wind farm, located around 72 kilometers off the coast of Lower Saxony, is expected to become the largest offshore wind farm in Germany to date, with a capacity of 913 megawatts, once it goes into operation at the beginning of 2026. According to Ørsted, this will be enough to supply around 900,000 households with electricity.

According to the company, the wind turbines still need to be connected to the DolWin epsilon converter platform. Transmission system operator Tennet plans to install this platform at sea this year.

"Once it is up and running, the project will make a significant contribution to the decarbonization of our industrial customers – on a scale that only offshore wind energy can achieve," said Jorg Kubitza, managing director of Ørsted in Germany, according to a statement.

The business model is based on long-term power purchase agreements, which are being applied to offshore wind in this way for the first time in Germany. According to the statement, Amazon, BASF, materials manufacturer Covestro, Rewe and Google are among the buyers of wind energy.

Wind farms are monitored from East Frisia

Ørsted began installing the first wind turbine foundations – covering an area of 75 square kilometers – about a year ago. This is an area more than twice the size of the island of Borkum.

The installed turbines are from Siemens Gamesa and are the latest generation. According to Ørsted, the turbines, each with a capacity of eleven megawatts and a rotor diameter of 200 meters, are the largest wind turbines in the German North Sea. These were also built in parallel in another Ørsted wind farm off Norderney, Gode Wind 3.

Ørsted is one of the world's leading operators of offshore wind farms. To date, the Danish energy supplier operates four wind farms in the German Bight. Operations and maintenance are carried out from Emden and Norden-Norddeich in East Frisia.

Recently, the expansion of offshore wind power in Germany has been making slow progress. According to the consulting firm Deutsche Windguard, 1,602 wind turbines with a total capacity of around 8.9 gigawatts were in operation in the North and Baltic Seas in the first half of 2024. The plan is to install a further 21 gigawatts of offshore wind energy capacity by 2030./len/DP/mis