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The making of Borssele offshore wind farms Offshore Energy Magazine will be taking a closer look into the now operational Borssele offshore wind projects: Borssele 1 & 2, Borssele 3 & 4, and the Borssele innovation site. The three projects – one developed by Ørsted, one by the Blauwwind consortium, and one by the Two Towers consortium – have each marked an industry-first in one way or another. This article will dive deeper into the tendering, planning, financing, and building the offshore wind farms.
Before it was named one of the backbones of energy transition and saw multiple new projects announced worldwide, and in more countries than ever before, offshore wind had one main quest – cost reduction. While this is, to some extent, also true today – the industry has long passed the price thresholds set several years ago and a few of the sector’s firsts in this regard happened in the Netherlands.
announced the winners of its first two Borssele tenders, first in July when Ørsted (then DONG Energy) crossed the mark of € 100/MWh by bidding 7.27 Eurocents per KWh, and then five months later when the Blauwwind consortium made headlines with a new record price – 5.45 Eurocents per KWh – thus brining the sector close to its aim of reaching levelized cost of energy (LCoE) of EUR 50 per MWh.
Tendering Borssele offshore wind farms Back in 2016, the Dutch government
This led to the cost of building and operating the Borssele 1 & 2 offshore wind farm to be some € 2.7 billion
cheaper than previously estimated and Borssele 3 & 4 to have even higher subsidy savings – needing a subsidy of only € 0.3 billion instead of the originally anticipated subsidy of € 5 billion. And to top it all, the Netherlands saved some room in the Borssele Zone to support offshore wind innovation to bring the costs further down and to facilitate novel approach to building sustainable offshore wind farms. At the Borssele V innovation site, the Dutch government is backing demonstration projects with € 15 million and the electricity produced by the two
