“Another six months, and everything will be ready,” forecasts Frank Coenen, managing director of Belwind, based in Zaventem. “We’re breaking world speed records here, with 56 foundations – 55 for the turbines and one for the high-voltage station,” he said. Work started in September last year, and next month they plan to bring the turbines out to sea.

By comparison, another wind energy park on the Flemish coast at Thorntonbank, being constructed by C-Power, has taken nearly three years to install six turbines.

Each of the Belwind turbines, which will be installed 46 kilometres off the coast, produces three megawatts (mW) of energy. The first 55 turbines will be followed later by a further 55, bringing the total capacity to 2,000- 2,300 mW.

“These are works of titanesque proportions,” Coenen said. “The foundations are steel tubes with a diameter of more than five metres. They have to be set up in the sea in one go, and anything can go wrong. Twice it’s happened that a foundation tube has fallen over and been lost in the sea. But, all in all, everything is going amazingly smoothly.”

The project almost didn’t happen at all. The total budget is €614 million and, when the financial crisis was at its height last year, it looked as if Belwind would not be able to raise the necessary financing. The main sponsor at that time, Dutch energy company Econcern, went broke. The Flemish government’s investment agency Participatiemaatschappij Vlaanderen was able to step in with the necessary financial guarantees to allow work to proceed.

The Belwind turbines are being assembled by a workforce of 200, and the company will employ 60 to maintain the energy park, which will produce enough electricity to supply 175,000 households. The electricity will be brought to land via 50 kilometres of steel cable. The turbines are 189 metres high from the foundation to the tip of the blade, while the blades themselves describe a circle of 90 metres.

http://meewind.nl/belwind