Vattenfall to build 980 MW Nordlicht I offshore wind farm without government subsidies

Vattenfall to build 980 MW Nordlicht I offshore wind farm without government subsidies

(IN BRIEF) Swedish energy company Vattenfall has announced the development of Nordlicht I, a state-of-the-art offshore wind farm with a capacity of 980 MW, located in the North Sea. The wind farm, formerly known as N-7.2, is expected to come online by the end of 2027 and will produce enough electricity for one million German households per year. This comes as part of Vattenfall’s commitment to become fossil fuel-free by 2040. Nordlicht I will be built without any government subsidies and will be situated approximately 85 kilometers north of the island of Borkum. Vattenfall operates around 4.2 GW of onshore and offshore wind power, with 11.3 TWh of combined annual production, and is one of the pioneers in the field of offshore wind in Germany.

(PRESS RELEASE) STOCKHOLM, 14-Feb-2023 — /EuropaWire/ —  Vattenfall, a Swedish government-owned multinational power company, has announced the renaming of its 980 MW wind project in the North Sea to “Nordlicht I”. The wind farm, which will be operational by the end of 2027, is set to produce fossil-free wind power for one million German households.

As part of the company’s efforts to develop Nordlicht I, a state-of-the-art offshore wind farm with an installed capacity of 980 megawatts without government subsidies, Vattenfall has asserted its right of entry to the construction area, which is located around 85 kilometers north of the island of Borkum. Subject to the company’s final investment decision, Nordlicht I can go online by the end of 2027, producing an amount of electricity per year that corresponds to the annual consumption of more than one million average German households.

Vattenfall currently operates around 4.2 gigawatts of onshore and offshore wind power with a combined annual production of 11.3 terawatt hours. In Germany, Vattenfall is one of the pioneers in the field of offshore wind, having put the first German offshore wind farm “alpha ventus” into operation in 2010 with its partners E.ON and EWE. Vattenfall also operates the offshore wind farms “DanTysk” (in operation since 2014) and “Sandbank” (in operation since 2016) in Germany, in which Stadtwerke München has a stake. Together, Sandbank and DanTysk supply around 700,000 households with electricity every year.

The responsible project manager at Vattenfall, Matthias Buko, says about the naming of Nordlicht I: “The name N-7.2 was a standardized identifier for the project area. Traditionally, offshore wind projects have been given individual names. Accordingly, the project team decided early on that the wind farm to be built on this area needed a new and more personal name. The new name refers to the location of the wind farm in the North Sea. Also the fossil-free electricity produced there is symbolically in harmony with the generation of light,” Buko says.

Facts Nordlicht I