The world's largest offshore wind farm reached a milestone on Oct. 7, sending its first power to the United Kingdom grid, the BBC and other outlets reported.
The Dogger Bank project cost $14 billion, according to Recharge, and will feature 277 turbines that produce 3.6 gigawatts of clean energy. It is slated for completion in 2026.
The North Sea farm, about 81 miles (130 kilometers) off the coast at its closest point, was the first venture in the U.K. to use high-voltage direct current, noted a press release. CNBC reported the GE Vernova Haliade-X 13MW turbine blades measure 351 feet.
The wind farm is expected to power 6 million homes annually.
"Dogger Bank will provide a significant boost to U.K. energy security, affordability, and leadership in tackling climate change," Alistair Phillips-Davies, CEO of SSE Renewables, one of the companies partnering on the project, stated. "This is exactly how we should be responding to the energy crisis.
"The innovations this pioneering project has developed will also mean future developments can be built faster and more efficiently, accelerating the clean energy transition," Phillips-Davies said.
SSE, which owns a 40% stake in Dogger Bank, stated the completed farm will offer carbon dioxide savings equivalent to annually removing 1.5 million cars from the road.
Advancing offshore wind is the first step in the U.K.'s Ten Point Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution, launched in 2020. The initiative calls for about $14.6 billion in government investments and asks private companies to triple that.
If Britain reaches its original goal to quadruple its offshore wind capacity to 40 gigawatts by 2030, it could power every home in the country solely with wind power.
"You know we have a cost of energy crisis in Europe and in Britain at the moment," Benj Sykes told CBS News. "That's driven by the pandemic but also of course by the terrible situation in Ukraine. And all that adds up to a real drive to find clean, cheap energy solutions."
Sykes is the vice president of offshore wind at Ørsted, a Danish energy company that runs another huge U.K. wind farm, Hornsea.
The U.K. generates more electricity from offshore wind than any country in the world, according to the United States International Trade Administration. The country's coastline and shallow seas have made it an ideal place for the most offshore installations and seven of the ten largest installations in the world.
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