There has been much talk about giant offshore wind farms lately, such as the completion of the London Array; now it is time to look at a giant onshore wind farm which has just come online.
The Fantanele wind farm is located in Dobregea Constanta County in Romania and is operated by the Romanian branch of central Europe's largest utility, the CEZ Group. It consists of 240 2.5MW wind turbines supplied by General Electric, which produce an overall capacity of 600MW, making it the largest onshore wind farm in Europe.
Ond?ej Šafá?, the project manager for the site, said; "we chose GE because of its proven technology and the extensive experience of its project teams. The 2.5-megawatt technology offers the efficiency, availability and energy performance that will safeguard our success.
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Thanks to the Fantanele/Cogealac wind farm, CEZ is making a major contribution to increasing Romania's renewable energy generation. Before this project, Romania's installed wind capacity was only 14 megawatts."
The size of the task was daunting, and not helped by the location. Different components of the turbines that were manufactured in different countries from around the world all had to be shipped to the remote country of Romania, which required the use of twelve different modes of transport .
Stephan Ritter, the General Manager at GE, explained that, "detailed planning, clear processes and a lot of dedication ensured that the project was completed on time…. We were able to feed the experience we gained during the construction phase straight back into the project. We are very proud of the outstanding achievement of our project team."
The use of wind turbines from GE increases the US company's global wind energy portfolio. Its 2.5Mw wind turbines alone provide more than 2GW of power to various countries around the world, and supply around 1.4 million European homes with renewable energy.
By. Joao Peixe of Oilprice.com
Joao is a writer for Oilprice.com More