A new wind farm came on stream today near Barrow in Furnace, the scale is awesome and it takes advantage of one of the most reliable windy places on the planet. Could these farms also become potential marine conservation areas helping to improve fish stocks around our shores.
Here's the official account.
The 90 MW Barrow Offshore Wind Farm, developed by DONG Energy and Centrica, is located in the East Irish Sea approximately 7km south west of Walney Island, near Barrow-in-Furness. The wind farm consists of 30 Vestas 3MW turbines covering an area of approximately 10km².
Annual production is around 305 GW/h, enough to meet the demand of around 65,000 British households. Electricity generated by the wind farm is delivered to the National Grid at a substation in Heysham, Lancashire via 27km of buried subsea transmission and onshore cables.
Construction and commissioning work for Barrow Offshore Wind Farm was completed in June 2006, a little over a year after offshore work got underway in the East Irish Sea. First power was generated in March 2006. DONG Energy’s team of technicians and project staff operate the wind farm from an operations and maintenance (O&M) base in Barrow-in-Furness.
The Barrow offshore wind farm’s transmission assets were sold to TC Barrow OFTO Ltd for £34 million in 2011. The disposal is in line with regulation requiring offshore wind farm generators to divest their transmission assets to offshore transmission owners. Barrow Offshore Wind Ltd and TC Barrow OFTO Ltd have agreed a five year operation and maintenance contract for the transmission assets
