Poland will build its first ever offshore wind farm
It has been recently reported that Poland is going to start a project of building a wind farm on the Baltic Sea. The farm will be located 23 kilometres off Polish seashore, in the Pomeranian voivodship. The project is called “Middle Baltic III”.
In the country upon the Vistula river wind turbines are nothing out of extraordinary. They are located in numerous places all across the country. However, building a wind farm on sea is a whole new experience.
The project will help Warsaw to meet the Renewable Energy Directive threshold of green energy consumption that has been imposed on the EU Member States. By 2020, 15% of Poland’s energy is to come from renewable sources.
Poland is not a good place to focus on solar energy, due to unfavourable weather conditions and climate. That is why companies interested in green energy direct their attention to other types of energy, notably wind, geothermal heat, and biomass.
Producers of energy from wind have recently been strongly hit by amendments to the energy law. The new provisions impose harsh restrictions concerning building wind farms in Poland. The area surrounding a wind turbine needs to be free of buildings. Experts say this means construction of new onshore wind farms will be virtually impossible.
However, the new regulations apply only to onshore constructions. What is more, offshore wind turbines are more efficient than the same constructions built on land and also more stable. Average wind speed in the place the farm is to be located is estimated at 9 to 10 m/s.
The wind farm will consist of 120 wind turbines with target operating capacity of 1200 MW. The turbines will be 275 metres high. The investor is a Polish company called Polenergia. Its main shareholder is Kulczyk Investments. The company owns several onshore wind farms across the country.
The investor is obliged to take steps towards minimizing the farm’s impact on the environment during all stages of development. This will be verified by Regional Directorate of Environment Protection in Gdańsk.
Project schedule will be released soon. If everything goes according to plan, the wind farm will start to produce energy from wind from 2022.
The investment is the first of its kind in Poland, but if it proves successful it is likely that more wind farms will appear in the Polish part of the Baltic Sea.
