Supplier selected for next offshore plant -- Bonus makes own blades

In competition with five other companies, Bonus has been selected to supply 72, 2.2 MW wind turbines for the Nysted Havmøllepark, the name now given to the offshore project on the Rødsand bank, 12 kilometres south of the Danish island of Lolland in the southern Baltic Sea between Denmark and Germany. The DKK 900 million (EUR 121 million) order includes the turbines, service and guarantees, but not the foundations which are on their way out to tender.

Bonus is to make its own 40 metre blades for the offshore turbines. Until now the company has used blades from LM Glasfiber, but it has been developing its own blade division since 1998 in the town of Aalborg, 150 kilometres north of its main facility at Brande. Blade work so far has concentrated on a 30 metre design, tested on Bonus 1.3 MW turbines in Denmark, Germany and the US, says the company's Henrik Stiesdal. The first blade was installed 18 months ago. As yet Bonus has not decided if it will produce the 40 metre blade in house or outsource the work.

Bonus won the Nysted Havmøllepark tender in competition with Vestas, NEG Micon, Nordex, Enercon and Enron. It is the second of five 150 MW offshore wind stations ordered by the Danish government. Work on pile foundations for the transformer station for the first offshore wind farm, at Horns Rev off Denmark's exposed North Sea coast, was due for completion last month. The transformer station will be installed in the spring, with the entire wind plant of 80 Vestas 2 MW turbines scheduled for completion next summer. The plant will be run by Elsam, the grid operator for western Denmark.

The Nysted offshore station on Rødsand bank will be installed in summer 2003 with operation scheduled from October that year. The grid operator for eastern Denmark, Energi E2 owns 50% of the project, while Danish Oil and Gas (DONG) owns 30% and the Swedish utility Sydkraft 20%. Sydkraft is partly owned by giant German utility Preussenelektra. E2 will operate the plant, which is predicted to generate 500 million kWh, enough for 125,000 households.

The three remaining offshore plant, for sites off the small island of Ømo in the Great Belt south of Zealand, off the island of Læsø in the middle of the Kattegat Sea, and on Gedser Rev, south of Falster between Denmark and Germany, are to be in operation in 2008. Three offshore wind farms now operate in Denmark, including the 40 MW Middelgrund wind station of Bonus 2 MW turbines just off Copenhagen, which was completed in the summer. Bonus also supplied turbines to the far smaller Vindeby demonstration project of 11, 450 kW machines between Denmark and Germany, the world's first offshore wind farm. The third offshore plant, built in 1995, consists of ten Vestas 500 kW turbines off the east coast of Jutland.