Orsted opens world’s largest offshore wind farm in Irish Sea area

Bloomberg

Orsted A/S unveiled the world’s largest offshore wind farm, an 87-turbine complex in the Irish Sea covering an area more than double the size of Manhattan.
The Walney Extension off the coast of northwest England has a generating capacity of 659 megawatts and is capable of powering 590,000 homes, according to Danish company Orsted, the world’s biggest developer of offshore wind farms.
MHI Vestas Offshore Wind A/S and Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy SA provided the turbines for the project that began construction in August 2015. The Vestas 8-megawatt turbines stand 195 meters
tall while the 7-megawatt version by Siemens is 154 meters from sea level to blade tip.
At 145 square kilometres, Walney overtakes another UK offshore wind farm, London Array, as the world’s largest. It uses less than half the number of turbines over a larger area to generate more power.
Orsted sold 50 percent of Walney to a group of Danish pension funds in November 2017. The UK currently operates 1,837 offshore wind turbines with an operational capacity of 7.1 gigawatts, according to trade association Renewable UK.