Amrumbank West will extend over 32 square kilometers and will employ 80 3.6 megawatt turbines for a total capacity of 288 MW -- that's enough energy to power 300,000 households. Amrumbank West is scheduled to be completed (and enter service) in the late summer of 2015. Capital expenditures on the project are expected to reach roughly €1 billion.
To help build Amrumbank West, E.ON has chartered the MPI Discovery -- a self-elevating turbine installation vessel or jackup rig. How it works: Once materials are shipped to the deepwater site, the massive rig lowers six legs on to the seabed and then raises itself hydraulically above the surface of the sea, creating a stable platform for operating the ram and cranes it uses to install foundations, towers, and turbines. The ram is then used to drive the 60-meter-long steel tubular monopile foundations roughly 30 meters into the seabed at water depths of up to 24 meters. The entire foundation structure, which consists of the monopile and the transition piece, weighs about 900 metric tons.
E.ON is using a state-of-the-art system to reduce water-borne noise during pile-driving. “We’re drawing on all the expertise we’ve gathered from our offshore facilities in the United Kingdom and Scandinavia, and from the construction and operation of alpha ventus in Germany," said Eckhardt Rümmler, CEO of E.ON Climate & Renewables. "Offshore wind is on the road to becoming a reliable and cost-effective source of electricity...and Amrumbank West will help take us significantly closer to this goal.”