Siemens Gamesa bags another order for its 14 MW offshore turbine

Siemens Gamesa has received another order for its new flagship 14 MW offshore wind turbine. The manufacturer will deliver 100 units for Innogy’s 1.4-gigawatt Sofia Offshore Wind Farm in the UK.

At 1.4 GW, Sofia is the largest project in Innogy’s current development portfolio. The 593-square-kilometre offshore wind park will be roughly the same size as the Isle of Man. Its sheer scale and size offer significant economic opportunities for the UK with potential supply chain benefits, infrastructure and associated jobs and contracts, the company states.

The 100 SG 14-222 DD offshore wind turbines are planned to be installed commencing 2024. They will be located  195 kilometres off the northeast coast of the UK, on the shallow area of the central North Sea known as Dogger Bank. The project will have the capacity to generate enough electricity to power to more than 1.2 million British households when completed. The final investment decision is expected to be made in the first quarter of 2021.

“Siemens Gamesa’s towering 14 MW machine is a perfect match for our flagship Sofia project, together cementing offshore wind‘s central role in the world’s clean energy future”, says Sven Utermöhlen, senior vice president Renewables Operations Offshore at Innogy. “This turbine embodies the impressive technology we need to build our ground-breaking project, that is further from shore and more technically challenging than any of its predecessors.”

SG 14-222

The SG 14-222 is the latest addition to Siemens Gamesa’s wind turbine portfolio. Wit a rotor diameter of 22 metres and blades of 108 metres it will be one of the two largest offshore wind turbines in the world, with the other one being GE’s Haliade-X wind turbine.

The turbine’s 39,000-square-metre swept area is equivalent to approximately 5.5 standard football pitches. It allows the SG 14-222 DD to increase annual energy production by more than 25 per cent compared to the SG 11.0-200 DD offshore wind turbine, which currently is the company’s largest offshore turbine.

The Sofia project takes the total order backlog for the new mega wind turbine to 4.3 GW and follows recent orders for the 300 MW Hai Long offshore wind farm in Taiwan and the massive 2.6 GW DominionEnergy Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (CVOW) project in the US. Talks for an additional order of 1,044 MW for the Hai Long project are ongoing.