The first turbine of RWE’s 342MW Kaskasi offshore wind farm (pictured) was recently commissioned, and is now supplying green electricity to the grid.
Nine of the total 38 Siemens Gamesa SG 8.0-167 DD Flex offshore wind turbines are installed, each with a capacity of close to 9MW, RWE said.
Kaskasi is RWE’s sixth wind farm off the German coast and it expected to be fully operational by the end of 2022.
Kaskasi will be capable of supplying the equivalent of more than 400,000 German households with green electricity every year.
Furthermore, together with Siemens Gamesa, the Kaskasi project now features the world’s first installed recyclable wind turbine blades.
The components of the 81-metre long RecyclableBlades are able to be recycled for new applications at the end of their lifecycle.
RWE and Siemens Gamesa are helping to pave the way towards the full recyclability of wind turbines.
Many components of a wind turbine already have established recycling practices.
Until now, the composite materials used in wind turbine blades have been more challenging to recycle.
The resin system employed binds all components together.
In its RecyclableBlade, Siemens Gamesa uses a resin type with a chemical structure that makes it possible to efficiently separate it from other components following decommissioning.
The process protects the properties of the materials, allowing them to be reused in new casting applications, for example in the automotive industry or in consumer goods like flight cases and flatscreen casings.
Siemens Gamesa Offshore Business Unit chief executive Marc Becker said: “We are proving that as the leaders of the offshore revolution, we are committed to making disruptive technology innovation commercially viable with the pace that the climate emergency demands.
“We’ve brought the Siemens Gamesa RecyclableBlade technology to market in only 10 months: from launch in September 2021 to installation at RWE’s Kaskasi project in July 2022.
“This is impressive and underlines the pace at which we all need to move to provide enough generating capacity to combat the global climate emergency.
“This milestone marks a significant contribution to Siemens Gamesa’s target of having fully recyclable turbines by 2040. With RecyclableBlade available for our customers, we can create a virtuous circular economy.”