EWE expands its wind energy core competency

EWE has been investing in producing electricity from renewable energies for over 20 years. The company has built up substantial expertise in this area over time, particularly with regards to wind energy.

One promising approach is installing wind energy plants not just along the coast, but on the high seas as well. An important project taking this approach is alpha ventus - the first German offshore wind park. The project consists of 12 high-performance wind energy plants 45 kilometres north of the island of Borkum. This places the offshore wind park 60 kilometres from the mainland in water 30 metres deep.

The Deutsche Offshore-Testfeld und Infrastruktur-GmbH & Co. KG (DOTI) was formed in 2006 to realise the alpha ventus project. EWE AG holds a 47.5% stake in DOTI, making it the largest shareholder, and is carrying out the project together with other energy industry partners. The wind energy plants have a combined installed capacity of 60 MW. An offshore transformer station was installed at the south-east corner of the wind park, which steps the voltage up from 30 kV to 110 kV and feeds it through a submarine cable to the mainland.

Constructing, operating and integrating alpha ventus into the network provides crucial experience for the future commercial use of offshore facilities and useful study data on its impact on the marine environment. For this reason the project is being accompanied by the research initiative RAVE - Research at alpha ventus. The initiative aims to gather experience and information to help with the construction and operation of future offshore wind parks. RAVE is supported by the German Federal Environment Ministry (BMU) and comprises the scientific activities of the plant manufacturers and a number of research institutes.

In addition to its activity in alpha ventus, EWE is jointly developing an offshore wind park called RIFFGAT off Germany’s North Sea coast with its partner ENOVA.

The alpha ventus offshore wind energy park is made up of twelve multi-megawatt plants