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North Sea wind farm Hornsea 2 is now the world’s largest

Hornsea 2 project is capable of generating electricity that would power about 1.3 mn homes.

Heard of the Hornsea 2 project? Well, if you haven’t, it is an offshore windfarm located 33 miles off the coast of Yorkshire. What is significant about this is that it is the world’s largest offshore wind farm.

Fully operational at the moment, the Hornsea 2 project is said to be capable of generating electricity that would power about 1.3 million homes. Awesome, isn’t it? Hornsea 2, part of a huge wind farm development by energy company Orsted, comes as a boon for the United Kingdom, as power generated by it can provide electricity to a full region about the size of Manchester. It needs to recalled that till a decade ago, UK had only a 11 percent share when it came to renewables. It grew up to 40 percent by 2021, and the major contributor has been offshore wind.

With the Hornsea 2 project now on stream, it comes as a major leap for the UK in terms of turning to renewables and preserving the planet. The Hornsea 2 windfarm has a total of 165 turbines and spreads across an area four and half times the size of Liverpool, said a BBC News post.

Hornsea 2 project has 165 turbines

All the 165 turbines in Hornsea 2 are close to 200m above sea level to the top of the 81m blades. A single rotation takes six seconds, generating power that could be enough for a home for a whole day. The new largest wind farm project comes as a relief at a time when the energy crisis is reaching its peak, thanks to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The world is now looking more for alternatives to gas fired power stations, but with no viable solutions.

In the case of setting up of offshore wind projects, the process itself takes a minimum of five years right from the planning consent to full operation. However, once on stream, they turn out to be the cheapest form of energy generated.

Much larger offshore wind farms in the works

The Hornsea 2 project might hold the credit of being the world’s largest offshore wind farm for only some more time. This is because, even larger projects are under construction in the North Sea. For instance, the Dogger Bank wind farm, when it goes on stream sometime next year, could be larger enough to power 6 million homes.

It is indeed great that the number of and size of wind farms and turbines have increased over the past decade. This will go a long way in cutting down on generation cost of electricity in a major way.

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Sanjeev Ramachandran

A journalist with 23 years of experience, Sanjeev has worked with reputed media houses such as Business Standard, The Ne More »

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