• 56 wind turbines of the six-megawatt class for the Galloper project
• Siemens Financial Services to hold 25 percent of the total equity in Galloper Wind Farm Ltd.
• Output of 336 megawatts to supply up to 336,000 British households
• Long-term maintenance contract
Siemens is to supply, install and commission 56 wind turbines for the Galloper Wind Farm Ltd. (GWFL) off the south-east coast of England. The owners of the offshore wind power plant are RWE, UK Green Investment Bank, Macquarie Capital and Siemens Financial Services (SFS), each with a 25 percent stake. The plant’s 336 megawatt capacity will be sufficient to supply up to 336,000 British households with clean power. Siemens will also be responsible for servicing the wind turbines for a 15-year period. The total investment costs of the Galloper project are 1.5 billion British pounds.
“We are pleased that Siemens will again be supplying the six megawatt wind turbines for an offshore wind power plant in the UK,” said Michael Hannibal, CEO Offshore of the Wind Power and Renewables Division of Siemens AG. So far, the company has already sold about 300 of its SWT-6.0-154 wind turbines to UK and German projects. “We are working hard on making the cost of power from offshore wind power plants competitive with other ways of generating electricity,” Hannibal added.
The company is working on various levers to reduce the cost of offshore wind power still further. As early as 2020, Siemens aims to have technologies available that will make it possible to generate electric power at a cost of less than 10 Euro cents per kilowatt hour. Improvements will be made not only to the wind turbines themselves; the company is also focusing on innovations in connecting the offshore installations to the grid and in servicing.
