The new Hollandse Kust Zuid wind farm supplied power to the Dutch electricity grid for the first time on Tuesday. When construction is completed in mid-2023, the windmills will produce enough electricity for two million households, owner Vattenfall reports.
Hollandse Kust Zuid is the first subsidy-free wind farm in the Dutch North Sea. Vattenfall, BASF and Allianz pay for the construction themselves and are not compensated if the market price for electricity is low, as was the case with previous wind farms.
The wind farm is located 18 to 35 kilometers off the coast between Scheveningen and Zandvoort. In total, about 140 turbines will be installed in the wind farm, 36 of which have already been installed. “All activities will continue in the coming months, with the Hollandse Kust Zuid wind farm steadily supplying more sustainable energy to the grid,” said a Vattenfall spokesperson.
She cannot yet say exactly how many turbines will supply power this winter, because construction is highly dependent on weather conditions. Renewable energy will be desperately needed this winter to save natural gas, as Russia continues to close the gas tap and gas prices are skyrocketing. In the winter in particular, the Netherlands uses a lot of natural gas to generate electricity.
The entire wind farm will save about 1.2 billion cubic meters of gas on an annual basis, energy expert Martien Visser calculates. Next winter it will be even less. “But it is still a significant contribution, even this winter,” says Visser. “We now have to be careful with every cubic meter.”
The largest wind farm at sea for a while
When the construction of the wind farm is completed next year, Hollandse Kust Zuid will be the largest offshore wind farm in the world. That will probably not take long: a wind farm is now under development off the coast of England that will be more than twice as large.
In the next ten years, the North Sea will become an increasingly important source of energy for the Netherlands. Earlier this year, the cabinet decided to almost double energy generation at sea in the long term. By 2031, there must be 21 gigawatts of wind farms in the North Sea, enough to supply the whole of the Netherlands with power on a windy day.
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