Vattenfall starts work on 80 MW in Lappland

Swedish energy group Vattenfall, a substantial player in offshore wind power, is waking up to the potential of its home market on land. This month it starts site work for an 80 MW project at Stor Rotliden in northern Sweden's Lappland, with plans to commission the wind farm by next year. The project was acquired from private developer Vindkompaniet. A series of recent acquisitions have demonstrated Vattenfall's ambition to become the fastest growing wind power developer and operator in northern Europe. It recently made its largest offshore investment yet, buying the 300 MW Thanet project off the coast of England, south of the 1 GW London Array development. Stor Rotliden marks speeding up of Vattenfall's aim to generate 4 TWh a year from onshore wind plant in Sweden by 2016. Another 4 TWh is expected to come from Swedish offshore production for a total of 8 TWh every year, nearly half of Sweden's annual goal of 17 TWh of generation from wind by that year. Expected annual production from Stor Rotliden will be 240 GWh. To cost about SEK 1.5 billion (EUR 143 million), Stor Rotliden will consist of 40 turbines. Vattenfall declines to say if it will be using the 50 Vestas 2 MW turbines it ordered last year, or some of the 100 Siemens 2.3 MW machines it also contracted for in 2008. Stor Rotliden is the one of three wind farms the firm will build this year out of about 50 projects in development in northern Europe and about 20 in Scandinavia. Vattenfall intends to reach 49 TWh of wind generation a year by 2030. Towards that aim, it is considering locations, both on land and offshore, in Sweden, Denmark, Britain, Germany, Poland and the Netherlands.