Huge Wind Farm To Be Built Off Coast of Wales

The Welsh coast is known for its wind, which makes a wind farm a logical idea. Now it is coming to fruition with the announcement of a huge wind farm to be built off the coast of Wales.

Wales has a beautiful coastline, but it isn’t exactly tropical. The wind used to be just a characteristic of the area, but now it is being given a new look. In fact, the sheer energy the wind provides is going to be harnessed. The wind farm will be known as the Gwynt y Môr project. The name may be a mouthful, but the results will be massive.

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RWE AG and Siemens are teaming up on the project. It will be located about 18 kilometers off the coast and be one of the largest wind farms in the world. At its peak, the project will produce over 576 megawatts of electricity. That is enough electricity to power over 400,000 homes a day. That is a sizeable amount of clean energy.

The Gwynt y Mor project is part of an overall plan by the British government to tap into clean, free energy. The UK once had sizeable oil reserves offshore in the North Sea, but all of those major fields are in decline. This has spurred the government to investigate and invest in clean energy. Given the windy shorelines that naturally occur on the island, the use of wind power platforms simply makes sense and the UK is building farms right and left.

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Construction on the farm will start in 2011. The first wind turbines should be online by 2013 with the last coming online in 2014. The project will consist of a total 160 massive 3.6 megawatt Siemens wind turbines that will rise 150 meters above sea level. The farm will cover more than 31 square miles of ocean, but should not be viewable from land. The total cost of the project is expected to be $2.44 billion.

Wind power has become very popular in the commercial production of electricity across the world. Expect this to continue given the success of the plants being built.

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