Danish Giant Orsted Revs Up World’s Second-Largest Offshore Wind Farm

Ninety-four Eiffel Tower-sized wind turbines are now whirring a dozen miles off the coast of the Netherlands, after Danish wind giant Orsted finished installing on Friday what is now the world’s second-largest offshore wind farm.

Borselle 1 and 2, as it is known, cements Orsted’s dominance as the top offshore turbine installer in the world. The Danish firm currently installs around one of every three offshore turbines around the world and has a market value of $75 billion.

The phalanx of 94 turbines at the newly commissioned site sprawls across 112 square kilometers and has enough generating capacity — 752 megawatts — to power one million Dutch households. 

The only offshore wind farm in the world that is larger is the UK’s Hornsea One, which boasts 1200 megawatts and is co-owned by Orsted and Global Infrastructure Partners. Orsted’s Hornsea Two, which is even larger, is currently under construction and expected to be fully operational sometime in 2022.

Installation of Borssele 1 and 2 occurred largely during the pandemic. Orsted rammed the first 1000-ton monopiles into the ocean floor in mid-January, shortly before Covid-19 began to spread widely in Europe. 

The formal opening of Borssele 1 and 2 arrives at a heady moment for the offshore wind industry and its leading operator. Rankings of the biggest offshore wind farms in the world are constantly being re-shuffled as new project completions outdo one another in size and power. 

A raft of new projects is on the way. Orsted and rival wind developers have hatched plans for a massive expansion of offshore wind off the US East coast, while the UK wants to quadruple its portfolio of offshore projects from 10 gigawatts to 40 by 2030. The UK’s “pipeline” of projects recently passed 50 gigawatts — roughly equal to the total power the UK might demand on a given day at peak demand. 

In an October 2019 report, the the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) estimated that global wind power capacity will balloon from around 25 gigawatts in 2019 to roughly 230 by 2030.  

Borssele 1 and 2 also cement Orsted’s dominance at the apex of the offshore wind installation industry. Even if Orsted were to bring no new projects online until 2025, its total power output from offshore wind farms wouldn’t be surpassed by the next largest developer, Sweden’s Vattenfall, until 2025, according to calculations by the trade publication Wind Power Monthly. 

Since going public in 2016 Orsted’s share price has risen nearly five-fold, vaulting the company’s market value to $75 billion. Shares rose another 3% on Friday. 

Orsted is barely recognizable from less than a decade ago, when it was still known as DONG Energy — short for Danish Oil and Natural Gas — and remained heavily invested in fossil fuels. By mid-2017 it had sold off much of its fossil fuels business, including its upstream oil and gas business to petrochemicals group Ineos for $1.1 billion. It changed its name in October that year. 

Orsted has been run for eight years by chief executive Henrik Poulsen, who joined the company in 2012. But Poulsen announced his resignation in June 2015. Orsted said in September that Mads Nipper, the CEO of Danish pump manufacturer Grundfos, would take over starting in January 2021.