Offshore wind pioneers
We look back today on ten years of systematically expanding offshore wind power, and celebrate the anniversary with our workforce, suppliers, investors and supporters. Together, we have come a long way. EnBW is now among the European leaders in offshore wind farm planning, construction, operation, maintenance and repair.
Making history together
With Baltic 1 ten years ago, we laid the foundation for offshore wind power in Germany. When we look back now, we are captured every time by the scale of the project, the incredible team effort involved, the great spirit of partnership and the fascinating success story we have written together.
In the video, EnBW employees talk about their connection with the Baltic 1 wind farm and what it means to them.
At a glance
As the name suggests, the Baltic 1 offshore wind farm is located in the Baltic Sea, 16 kilometres north of the Darss-Zingst peninsula. It is operated from the small harbour of Barhöft near Stralsund. Barhöft is home to EnBW’s service base and control centre. Eight service technicians are assigned to the wind farm. They travel daily to Baltic 1 on a crew boat and perform repairs and maintenance. The 21 wind turbines are spread over seven square kilometres of sea and have a total capacity of 48.3 megawatts (MW).
10 EnBW offshore highlights
2008 EnBW goes offshore: EnBW acquires four wind farm projects: Baltic 1 and 2 (Baltic Sea) and Hohe See and He Dreiht (North Sea).
2011 Baltic 1 complete: Chancellor Angela Merkel opens the first commercial Baltic Sea wind farm (48 MW).
2014 EnBW acquires Albatros: Fifth offshore project (112 MW) added and pending implementation.
2015 Baltic 2 complete: From the Gorch Fock 1 museum ship in Stralsund, Frank Mastiaux and attendees open EnBW’s second Baltic Sea wind farm (288 MW)
2016 Scaling up: Plans are taking shape to build Hohe See, the first North Sea wind farm (497 MW).
2017 Fanfare: EnBW causes a stir with its announcement to build He Dreiht (900 MW) without subsidies. Investment decision expected 2022/23.
2017 Nora, Julia, Heinz: 30 wind turbines in Baltic 2 named after employees after an in-house competition at EnBW.
2019 Going global: EnBW opens international offices (pictured: Boston, USA) with the aim of developing offshore wind power projects elsewhere.
2019 Two in one: Hohe See and the neighbouring Albatros wind farm complete.
A job with a great outlook
The technicians shuttle to their place of work on a service vessel. Ninety minutes out to sea, the team reaches the Baltic 1 wind turbines. They always have an eye on the weather. Travelling out to the wind farm would be too risky in a big swell.
Clad in bulky waterproof survival suits to prevent exposure in the icy Baltic Sea waters in case of emergency, they climb up the wind turbine. Servicing is done with the top of the nacelle open at a dizzying 73 metres elevation. It is physically demanding work, especially at cold temperatures in winter. Not everyone is suited to the job of wind turbine technician (‘wind tech’), but it is a dream career for those who choose it. What do they like so much about their unusual workplace?
We took a trip out with Arne Nehls, offshore service technician at EnBW, and found out what makes up his daily work routine and why he feels he has “the coolest workplace in the world”.
An offshore wind farm on the doorstep
On a clear day, you can see the 21 wind turbines that make up Baltic 1 from land. The fact that green electricity is generated right on their doorstep and the whole wind farm is run from their small harbour fills many Barhöft residents with pride.
In this interview, Barhöft harbourmaster Jan Sprenger and mayor Thomas Reichenbach speak about what the wind farm means for the town, its implications for tourism and whether the concerns people had before its construction have been borne out.
Baltic 1 in their own words
Baltic 1 has brought us new jobs. We had doubts, but tourism and offshore wind power go together better than I thought.My first job was at a coal power station. Compared with that, offshore engineering is something completely new. There’s certainly no boredom in this job.Baltic 1 construction phases
Building a wind farm offshore is not easy. Every step in the process brings new challenges: How to make sure all parts – foundations, towers, nacelles and rotors – make it on site intact and at the right time? But work actually begins long before that. The wind turbines at Baltic 1 stand on 215-tonne foundation piers that first had to be pile-driven – perfectly vertically – into the seabed nearly 20 metres below the water surface.
First of all, rocks were layered on the seabed to protect the wind turbines – which measure some 115 metres from foundation to blade tip – from scouring by marine currents and tides.
The SEA WORKER jack-up vessel then went into action to ram the monopiles – steel foundations about 37 metres long – into the seabed, each requiring some 3,000 blows of the pile driver.
Large steel sleeves called transition pieces followed to connect the monopiles with the wind turbines.
Finally, the SEA POWER installation vessel attached the nacelles, tower elements and the 45-metre rotor blades, high above the base.
The wind farm’s biggest single component is the steel structure for the offshore substation, which weighs some 900 tonnes fully fitted. That too needed a monopile and transition piece foundation which with a total weight of 1,415 tonnes is three times as heavy as the foundation beneath each of the wind turbines.
The substation was brought into position with millimetre precision – and in an extremely narrow four-hour ‘weather window’ – by Matador 3, one of the most powerful floating sheerleg cranes in Europe.
Stronger together: Our investment and business partners
A project of this size would be inconceivable without the involvement of numerous partners, from international suppliers to regional service providers and municipal utilities. We would like to thank all involved for their great support.
Through an investment company, 19 energy utilities have taken stakes in EnBW Baltic 1. They already acquired call options totalling 24 MW in May 2010 that they exercised in full in July 2011.
Municipal investors
Siemens
Siemens manufactured the 21 wind turbines in Brande, Denmark, and installed them in the wind farm zone together with Danish shipping company A2Sea.
Siemens wind turbines
A2Sea
The Danish shipping company installed the wind turbines in the wind farm zone with a jack-up vessel in cooperation with Siemens.
A2sea.com
EEW
Steel pipe manufacturer EEW produced the monopiles at its Rostock site and the transition pieces in Aarlborg, Denmark.
EEW
Ballast Nedam
Using a jack-up platform, Dutch company Ballast Nedam installed the foundations in the seabed both for the wind turbines and for the substation.
Ballast Nedam
Weserwind
Weserwind, Bremerhaven, fabricated the offshore substation (OSS) and fitted it with emergency accommodation, storage rooms and workshop cabins, building service systems, air conditioning and an emergency power supply.
Weserwind
ABB
ABB provided the electrical engineering for the OSS. This includes medium-voltage switchgear with all protection and control systems in order for the power from the wind turbines to be transformed up to high voltage.
ABB
nkt cables
Cologne-based NKT produced and laid the total of 61 km of deep-sea cables and connected the wind farm to the grid in cooperation with 50 Hertz GmbH.
nkt cables
Peter Madsen Rederi
Danish marine contractors Peter Madsen were responsible for providing the scour protection in the various construction phases in order to prevent the wind turbine foundations from being scoured by currents and tides.
Peter Madsen Rederi
50Hertz Offshore GmbH
50Hertz Offshore brings the electricity generated by EnBW Windpark Baltic 1 to shore by connecting the wind farm’s internal grid to the onshore transmission grid.
50Hertz Offshore GmbH
Klenk Gruppe
Klenk Group provided a flexible jacketed tube used to refuel the diesel tanks on the OSS.
Klenk Gruppe
Transas Marine GmbH
Transas developed the marine observation and worker tracking system used in the Barhöft control room. The company also maintains and services the system as service provider.
Transas Marine GmbH
International suppliers
Here is a selection of the companies from the Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania region which we work with locally: