Shell plans offshore wind plants

In order to gain experience in wind power, Shell Solar, a subsidiary of oil and chemicals giant Royal Dutch/Shell, is installing two Enercon 1.5 MW turbines on 100 metre towers on the site of its Hamburg-Harburg oil refinery in the first quarter of 2000. The electricity generated will be fed into the grid of local utility HEW and marketed under the joint Shell/HEW marketing scheme for renewables power, dubbed NewPower.

Shell is not planning further wind installations at any of its other refineries, according to Kublik. Rather it hopes to gain experience with turbines of 1.5 MW size on the way to its real target, offshore wind development. The turbines used in the planned offshore wind farms will not necessarily be from Enercon, he says.

Shell's interest in offshore wind partly stems from its competence in subsea cabling, remote maintenance and offshore structures in difficult maritime environments, says Dawson.