The photo is sourced from Global Wind Energy Council
Wind generators will be placed on floating platforms, which will be attached to the seabed. The complex covering a total of 359 square kilometres will include 18 wind turbines with a capacity of 55 MW each, which will be able to provide hundreds of thousands of private households with electricity. The project will mark the second coastal WPP to be built by IberBlue Wind, a joint venture of Ireland’s Simply Blue Group, which works in the area of wind energy, and Spain’s Proes Consultores and FF New Energy Ventures, which specialise in the development and construction of power units based on renewable energy sources. Earlier, the company announced another project for a coastal WPP with a capacity of 990 MW, which will be implemented in the Alboran Sea by the coast of Andalusia in the south of Spain.
Portugal is one of the eleven EU countries, which have coastal WPPs within their territory. According to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), the overall capacity of above-water wind turbines operating in Portugal stood at 25 MW in 2021, while the same indicator stands at 7,747 MW in Germany, which is the leading EU country in this regard.
A key advantage of above-water WPPs is the relatively high reliability of power supplies. For instance, the average utilisation rate of coastal wind generators in the United Kingdom reached 37.4% in 2021, whereas the utilisation rate of onshore wind generators was a mere 23.2%, according to Statista. However, this energy sector is characterised by high capital intensity: the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that the unit cost of commissioning above-water WPPs in the European Union – $3,040 per 1 kilowatt (kW) – was twice as high as that of onshore projects ($1,590 per 1 MW).
