Vattenfall and Stadtwerke München have completed the installation of the first Siemens turbine at the 288MW Sandbank offshore wind farm in the German North Sea.
The machine is the first of 72 SWT-4.0 130 turbines that will be installed 90km west of the island of Sylt.
The wind farm is expected to start operating in early 2017, the companies said.
Walk-to-work vessel MPI Adventure will install the towers, nacelles and rotor blades, while service operations vessel Acergy Viking will be used in the commissioning phase.
The former should allow the installation to finish about three months earlier than originally planned, the partners said.
“We are delighted that we can start a little earlier with the erection of the wind turbines as originally planned,” said Vattenfall responsible package manager for wind turbines Hergen Stolle.
“We now benefit from the excellent preparatory work done by our colleagues, who are responsible for the foundations, the inter array cabling and the substation,” he said. “It also shows that the co-operation between all project partners works very well.”
Image: Vattenfall
