Fosen Vind is a complex of six onshore
wind farm
A wind farm or wind park, also called a wind power station or wind power plant, is a group of wind turbines in the same location used to produce electricity. Wind farms vary in size from a small number of turbines to several hundred wind turb ...
s in
Fosen
Fosen is a traditional district in Trøndelag, consisting of the municipalities Osen, Roan Åfjord, Ørland, Indre Fosen, Orkland, Heim, Hitra and Frøya. The district is dominated by forested valleys, lakes, coastal cliffs but also shallow ar ...
, Norway, commissioned in 2018-20. With a nameplate capacity of 1
GW the project is Europe's second largest onshore wind farm (second to the
Markbygden Wind Farm); it more than doubled Norway's capacity for wind power generation.
Layout
Due to its size and the geography of the chosen area, Fosen Vind is partitioned into a group of six individually named wind farms.
Technology
The site has been chosen for its wind pattern with annual yields of more than 3,600 full load hours close to 9 m/s, similar to offshore sites.Vestas
Vestas Wind Systems A/S is a Danish manufacturer, seller, installer, and servicer of wind turbines that was founded in 1945. The company operates manufacturing plants in Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Taiwan, India, Italy, Romania, the Un ...
, 248 V117 and 30 V112, each with its capacity optimized from 3.45 MW to 3.6 MW, for a total capacity of 1,000 MW.[ Each turbine has a nacelle height of 87 m and a wing span of either 117 m][ or 112 m.
The transmission lines will use ]transmission tower
A transmission tower, also known as an electricity pylon or simply a pylon in British English and as a hydro tower in Canadian English, is a tall structure, usually a steel lattice tower, used to support an overhead power line.
In electrical ...
s of composite material
A composite material (also called a composition material or shortened to composite, which is the common name) is a material which is produced from two or more constituent materials. These constituent materials have notably dissimilar chemical or ...
s with foundations that do not require the use of explosives, reducing the environmental impact of the construction work.
The 71 turbine foundations for the Roan part of the farm will use rock anchor foundation technology and will be delivered by the Norwegian subsidiary of Peikko Group from April 2017 to the spring of 2018.
Economy
The expected cost of the project is €. The investors are Statkraft (52.1%), TrønderEnergi (7.9%) and a consortium ''Nordic Wind Power DA'' (40.0%) backed by Credit Suisse.[
The ]levelised cost of energy
The levelized cost of electricity (LCOE), or levelized cost of energy, is a measure of the average net present cost of electricity generation for a generator over its lifetime. It is used for investment planning and to compare different methods ...
(LCoE) is estimated in the range 35 €/MWh to 40 €/MWh, which is below a typical Norwegian wind farm price of 44 €/MWh and described as a ''rock-bottom price'' obtained via economies of scale
In microeconomics, economies of scale are the cost advantages that enterprises obtain due to their scale of operation, and are typically measured by the amount of output produced per unit of time. A decrease in cost per unit of output enables ...
.[
The project will receive government subsidies in the form of tradeable green certificates, which are typically valued at 15 €/MWh. Together with a current system price around 18 €/MWh to 20 €/MWh, the operator will likely receive the lower estimate of the LCoE.][
Of the expected annual production of 3.4 TWh (corresponding to 3,400 full load hours), about one third will actually be sold to ]Norsk Hydro
Norsk Hydro ASA (often referred to as just ''Hydro'') is a Norwegian aluminium and renewable energy company, headquartered in Oslo. It is one of the largest aluminium companies worldwide. It has operations in some 50 countries around the world a ...
as baseload supply for their aluminium
Aluminium (aluminum in American and Canadian English) is a chemical element with the symbol Al and atomic number 13. Aluminium has a density lower than those of other common metals, at approximately one third that of steel. I ...
production under a power purchase agreement
A power purchase agreement (PPA), or electricity power agreement, is a contract between two parties, one which generates electricity (the seller) and one which is looking to purchase electricity (the buyer). The PPA defines all of the commercial te ...
. Specifically, the agreement stipulates delivery of around 0.6 TWh in 2020, around 1.0 TWh annually from 2021-2035 and 0.7 TWh annually from 2036-2039, for a total of about 18 TWh over a 20-year period.
Criticism
Five days into the construction, on 20 August 2016 two hundred people gathered at the construction site to protest against the project. Norges Naturvernforbund criticizes the choice of site as an important reindeer
Reindeer (in North American English, known as caribou if wild and ''reindeer'' if domesticated) are deer in the genus ''Rangifer''. For the last few decades, reindeer were assigned to one species, ''Rangifer tarandus'', with about 10 sub ...
habitat of great importance to southern Sami
Acronyms
* SAMI, ''Synchronized Accessible Media Interchange'', a closed-captioning format developed by Microsoft
* Saudi Arabian Military Industries, a government-owned defence company
* South African Malaria Initiative, a virtual expertise ...
reindeer herders. The reindeer herders have demanded that the district court stop the construction work, citing violations of human rights and rights of indigenous people. Fosen Vind have responded that they have all necessary permits and declined to stop the construction work.[
The disagreement led to a trial in Høyesterett ("highest court"), in which Fosen vind and the Norwegian state lost, on the basis of breaking human rights. Their continued refusal to dismantle or in any way honor the courts advices, has increased the tension between the sami people and the state of Norway. A year past the trial, the windmills are still standing. ]
See also
* Hitra Wind Farm
*Renewable energy in Norway
Norway is a heavy producer of renewable energy because of hydropower. Over 99% of the electricity production in mainland Norway is from 31 GW hydropower plants (86 TWh reservoir capacity, storing water from summer to winter). The average hydropo ...
*List of largest power stations in the world
This article lists the largest power stations in the world, the ten overall and the five of each type, in terms of current installed electrical capacity. Non-renewable power stations are those that run on coal, fuel oils, nuclear fuel, natural g ...
*List of onshore wind farms
This is a list of the largest onshore wind farms that are currently operational, rated by generating capacity. Also listed are onshore wind farms with notability other than size, and largest proposed projects.
Largest operational onshore wind ...
References
{{Reflist
Fosen
Wind farms in Norway