Dong sells Danish test site to EDF

DENMARK: Dong Energy has sold its Frederikshavn offshore wind demonstration site in northern Denmark to EDF Energies Nouvelles (EDF-EN), considering it surplus to requirements.

by David Weston 30 July 2015

MHI-Vestas' V164 8MW turbine installed at the Osterild onshore test site

The site is located 4.5 kilometres east of Frederikshavn port on the northernmost tip of Denmark. Dong had approval to install up to six turbines there in water depths of 15-20metres.

"Testing and demonstration is an integral part of our business. But our demand for testing and demonstrating is met elsewhere, and we have therefore decided to divest the site to EDF Energies Nouvelles," said Dong's head of project development Per Hjelmsted Pedersen.

The Frederikshavn port had been planned as the test site for the MHI-Vestas V164-8MW turbine.

Dong and Vestas first agreed to test the V164 — then rated at 7MW — at Frederikshavn in 2011. Dong said it would invest DKK 240 million (€38.6 million, 2015 price).

But in 2012, Vestas  with Dong to test the offshore turbine at an onshore site in Osterild, on the west coast of Denmark's northern tip.

A prototype of the V164 was installed at at the start of 2014.

In October, EDF-EN's subsidiary EDF Renewable Energy the rights to the 99.9MW Blyth offshore testing site in the UK from development body ORE Catapult.