The world’s largest offshore wind farm is about to officially launch

The UK’s Hornsea Two, the world’s largest single operational offshore wind farm, is expected to be fully commissioned before the end of August.

The 1.32 GW Hornsea Two will dethrone the 1.2 GW Hornsea One as the largest operating offshore wind farms in the world. It’s 462 square kilometers (178 square miles) in size, and it will power more than 1.3 million homes.

Hornsea Two is off the east coast of England and was developed and is owned by Danish wind giant Ørsted. It features 165 Siemens Gamesa 8 megawatt (MW) turbines; most of the wind turbines’ blades were manufactured at Siemens Gamesa’s factory in Hull.

All of Hornsea Two’s wind turbines are now commercially operational. The entire project will be fully commissioned after the final reliability runs are completed, and that’s expected later this month.

Hornsea Two features the world’s largest AC offshore substation, and it also has a Reactive Compensation Station (RCS). An RCS is required because of cable length, so it will compensate for reactive power losses in order to ensure power transmission efficiency.

As Electrek reported on December 16, 2021, Hornsea Two produced its first electricity that month. But according to Ørsted’s 2021 annual report:

For Hornsea 2, we saw progress according to plan up until mid-December. However, the accelerating Omicron variant infection rates meant that it was not possible to man the vessels used for commissioning work according to plan.

As a result, the ramp-up of the huge offshore wind farm was delayed until now.

There are other big offshore wind projects in the pipeline globally, such as Ørsted’s Greater Changhua 1 & 2a in Taiwan, which is also expected to be commissioned this year.

The 4.8 GW Dogger Bank, off the Yorkshire coast in the UK, is expected to become the world’s largest offshore wind farm in 2026.

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