Construction is nearly complete on Britain’s expansive Hornsea 1 wind farm. Once it goes online it will produce enough electricity to power a million U.K. homes.
The installation of all 174 turbines should be complete some time next year. Combined, the 7MW turbines will allow Hornsea 1 to generate a total of 1.21 gigawatts. While that’s not quite enough to push a DeLorean through time, it is far and away the highest capacity of any wind farm in the world.
It’s just slightly less than double what the Walney Extension — which currently holds the top spot — can produce. Located in the Irish Sea, its 87 turbines are good for a total of 659MW.
There are two additional phases planned (Hornsea 2 and Hornsea 3, naturally). Construction on Hornsea 2 is already under way and it will be capable of powering about 1.6 million homes. Hornsea 3 says hold my beer: it’ll power a nice, round 2 million.
When all three phases are complete the Hornsea turbines will be able to power about 1 in 5 homes in the U.K. Officials have set a goal of meeting one third of power demands from offshore wind farms by 2030, so Hornsea should put that well within striking distance.
Orsted, the company awarded the contract for Hornsea, has completed more than two dozen wind farms around the world. Their first one in the U.S., Block Island, came online in 2016 and powers some 17,000 homes. Previously, homes on the island were powered by 5 diesel generators that consumed more than 1 million gallons of fuel per year.
The company has been awarded contracts for several more on the East Coast, from Virginia up to New England. They range in capacity from a few hundred megawatts to nearly two gigawatts.
Orsted isn’t new to the energy business. Up until 2017, the company operated as Dutch Oil and Natural Gas. The name change, as you may have guessed, coincided with a shift toward sustainability.
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