Dudgeon wind farm on track

abu dhabi — Masdar, Abu Dhabi’s renewable energy company, announced on Thursday that its second large-scale offshore wind farm in the United Kingdom has started supplying electricity to British homes.

Around six thousand households are now receiving power from the Dudgeon Offshore Wind Farm after the project’s first turbine began operating today. Sixtyseven 6-megawatt (MW) turbines will be installed altogether, generating enough power to provide electricity to 400,000 homes.

Masdar has a 35 per cent stake in Dudgeon with the Norwegian oil & gas company Statoil (35 per cent) and Norway’s state-owned electricity company Statkraft (30 per cent). “Thanks to the strength of the collaboration with our partners, the construction of Dudgeon is progressing as scheduled, and we’re delighted to see that the project is already delivering clean power to the UK National Grid,” said Bader Al Lamki, Executive Director for Clean Energy at Masdar. “The completion of Dudgeon will bring Masdar’s gross installed renewable energy capacity in the UK to more than one gigawatt.”

Margareth Ovrum, Executive Vice President of Technology, Projects and Drilling at Statoil, added: “This is a significant milestone for one of the largest offshore wind farms in Europe. I am particularly satisfied with the on-time deliveries and the HSE performance so far.”

Dudgeon represents Masdar’s biggest wind power investment in the UK after London Array, currently the world’s largest offshore wind power project in operation.