The Norwegian Petroleum and Energy Ministry had awarded permission for the construction of eight wind power projects across central Norway with an installed capacity of 1,300 MW and costing NOK20 billion (€2.5bn). Contract to companies SAE Vind DA, Sarepta Energi AS and Zephyr AS is an effort to triple the nation’s wind capacity.
The country’s electricity production is dominated by hydropower plants which are supplemented at peak demand periods in winter by imports of power produced by nuclear power plants by neighbor Sweden. However, the Scandinavian country is also making an aggressive push into windpower. Norway has previously made it clear that they hope to achieve 67.5% of their national electricity from renewable sources.
“This is a historic day for Norwegian wind power production, and will constitute a significant part of Norway’s renewable initiatives,” said Petroleum and Energy Minister, Ola Borten Moe. ”I think such a concentrated development is important to collect the disturbance rather than a scattered development.”
The ministry said that the eight power stations would have a combined 450 turbines. To compare, the country’s biggest existing windpower plant located at island of Smola, has an installed capacity of 150 MW and has 68 turbines. The new wind farms could provide about 3.7 TWh of renewable electricity generation, corresponding to the annual consumption of about 185,000 households, or three times the annual consumption in the central city of Trollheim.
“Overall, the eight wind power plants will be the world’s largest wind power project. The total investment of around NOK20 billion is one of the largest investments ever in mainland Norway,” the ministry said.
Norway’s windpower production still remains fairly negligible. State-owned utility Statkraft, reporting second quarter results, said that windpower accounted for 0.3 TWh of power, up from 0.2 TWh for Q2 last year compared with Q2 hydropower production of 10.6 TWh, which was down from 14.5T Wh for the same period a year ago.
But Statkraft also said it was allocating more resources both domestically and abroad and that during Q2 the UK 52.5MW Baillie (52.5 MW) onshore wind farm came on stream as did the 60 MW Stamasen plant in Sweden. It said that another five onshore wind farms were under construction, four in Sweden and one in the UK. The total installed capacity of these wind farms is 524 MW.
The new plants, connected by 25 miles of a new kV power cable, would be situated from the Norwegian towns of Overhall via Forsen to Trollheim. The national grid operator Statnett will build the 420 kV power line linking the stations to the national grid.