trailer world Issue One 2012

Issue One 2012 9 Title The future of electricity generation is grow- ing in the North Sea: offshore wind farms are shooting up from the seabed, facing logistics with the challenge “huge, but accurate”. Photo:BARD Waiting on weather” is displayed on the screen. Again. And the day before yesterday – 24 hour stoppage – and last week too. Storm and waves repeatedly cause involuntary breaks - employees must wait and bring forward other work. But the weather is exactly the reason why work is going on here, about 90 km northwest of Borkum: Giant wind turbines tower up into the sky out of the waters of the North Sea. An offshore wind farm, built by BARD Engineering GmbH of Emden, is converting moving air into electricity. The more the wind blows here the better. At the same time unusually strong waves and powerful gusts make work on the equipment dangerous for personnel and repeatedly cause interruptions in construction, maintenance and care. The weather is the engine and at the same time the un- predictable opponent of the projects, which are regarded as genuine hopes of green energy production. The farms are not “on the high seas”, but far enough out that they can justly be called “offshore”. The high wind speeds and the power- ful systems that can be installed here provide a significantly higher yield than wind turbines on land. These huge systems are largely out of sight. 15% of German electricity consumption is to be covered by offshore wind power by 2030: this is the ambitious goal of the Federal Government following Fukushima. This is a huge driver of the industry. The first installations are already up and running. Several dozen parks with up to 5,000 turbines are being planned. In addition to “Baltic 1” in the Baltic and “Al- pha ventus” and “BARD Offshore 1” in the North Sea, which are already generating electricity, the construction of an

trailer world Issue One 2012

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