Some people working in Liverpool offices will be aware of the incredible wind farm construction that has been taking place just outside their windows for the past six months.
The Burbo Bank extension has just gone live, and covers 40 square kilometres. It has doubled the capacity of the Burbo Bank windfarm built 10 years ago.
Built by Danish company Dong Energy, the 32 turbines in Liverpool bay are taller than the Gherkin and the blades are nine times as long as London buses. These 8MW turbines are much more powerful than any other the majority of turbines in UK waters today, which are generally between 3.0MW and 3.6MW.They are much more powerful, and notably, cheaper that the smaller turbines.
The building of this wind farm extension is a sign of things to come however, as the UK is proving itself to be a leading producer of renewable energy. Scotland is currently second only to Denmark with regards to wind production.
A further 16 windfarms featuring these 8MW turbine are planned for the UK, which will further cement our leading role in renewable energy production.
Our renewable energy boom hasn’t received much coverage nationally, but our wind energy capacity currently fuels 4.3m homes. There are eight further projects already under construction that it is expected will bring the total homes fuelled by wind energy to over 6 million.
Many of these wind farms are in the north of England and Scotland, where open windy seas, and our maritime past has put us in good stead for constructing these renewable energy centres.
The cheap nature of these new 8MW turbines is good news for the industry, which has been warned it needs to rely less on subsidies in order to continue its current growth streak. Generation costs have fallen a third since 2012, but there is a lack of clarity over what the future brings for the sector.
“[Burbo Bank extension] and other projects have been crucial for driving costs down for the whole industry,” Benjamin Sykes, country manager for Dong Energy UK told The Guardian.
The success of the renewable energy industry in transforming our relationship with energy production has been more visible than ever this year with our first coal-free day, and then the highest generation of solar power ever in the UK in May.
This meant that on the Friday of the May bank holiday weekend around 60 per cent of the energy produced in the UK was low carbon. The figure is normally around 50 per cent.
Solar energy has also grown significantly in the past seven years, from almost nothing a decade ago.
Hannah Martin, head of energy at Greenpeace, told The Guardian the record was: “a reminder of what the UK could achieve if our government reversed its cuts to support for solar, and backed the clean technologies that could provide jobs, business opportunities and plentiful clean energy for decades to come.”
This means that the UK is well on track to energy sufficiency, similar to our European cousins in coming years. This is thanks to the construction industry in Mersey side.