Burbo Bank Offshore Wind Farm

The Burbo Bank Offshore Wind Farm is a 348 MW offshore wind farm located on the Burbo Flats in Liverpool Bay on the west coast of the UK in the Irish Sea. It consists of an original 90 MW wind farm commissioned in 2007 and a 258 MW extension completed in 2017. The wind farm was developed in the 2000s by SeaScape Energy, which was acquired by DONG Energy (now Ørsted) in 2005. A 25 turbine installation using Siemens Wind Power 3.6 MW turbines was constructed from 2005, and officially opened in 2007. A further 32 8 MW turbines were constructed in 2016–17.

In September 2002 SeaScape Energy ( Zilkha Renewable Energy, enXco A/S, Wind Prospect Ltd. joint venture.) submitted an application to develop a Round 1 offshore wind farm site. The site, located on Burbo Flats in Liverpool bay (~7 km northwest of Wirral and ~6 km west of the Sefton coastline) was selected due to shallow water depths (0.5 to 8m at low tide), high wind speeds ~7 m/s (23 ft/s), and a generally favourable location including proximity to an electrical grid connection. Initial expectations were for a 30 × 3 MW turbine wind farm, with monopile foundations on a site of approximately 10 km2 (3.9 sq mi). An electrical connection to the mainland grid was to be made by a seabed cable running southeast to Wirral, followed by a ~3.5 km underground cable to a substation at Wallasey. SeaScape received a capital grant of £10 million in 2003 to aid development of the project. In 2003 EDF subsidiary enXco bought the interests of Wind Prospect in the project, the project became a joint venture between Elsam and EDF Energies Nouvelles in 2004 with Elsam taking 50% of the projecty. In September 2005 Siemens Wind Power was selected as the turbine supplier, with 25 3.6 MW turbines ordered at a cost of over €90 million. In December 2005 Dong Energy (now Ørsted) became sole owner of the project.

Power station data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).