One of the world’s largest offshore wind farms will use recycled turbine blades

The very first deployment of Siemens Gamesa’s 108-meter-long (354-feet-long) B108 recycled blades is headed to RWE’s 1.4 gigawatt (GW) Sofia offshore wind farm at Dogger Bank, off the UK’s east coast.

In 2022, global renewable energy giant RWE became the first commercial, large-scale offshore developer to install Siemens Gamesa’s recycled blade technology RecyclableBlade, at its Kaskasi offshore wind farm in Germany.

Kaskasi features 81-meter-long (266-feet-long) RecyclableBlades on select SG 8.0-167 DD offshore wind turbines, and Sofia is the first project to utilize the 108-meter-long RecyclableBlades – that’s equivalent to the length of a football pitch.

Siemens Gamesa’s RecyclableBlade technology enables the full reclamation of the wind turbine blade’s components at the end of the product’s lifespan: the resin, fiberglass, and wood, among others, are separated using a mild acid solution.  

The RecyclableBlades will be installed on 44 of Sofia’s 100 SG 14-222 DD offshore wind turbines, because according to RWE, that’s what’s currently available.

Marc Becker, CEO of Siemens Gamesa’s offshore business, said:

When we began working with RWE on the Kaskasi project, we knew that we had taken the first major steps toward delivering a decisive change to the wind sector. Having the opportunity to produce and install 132 RecyclableBlades for the Sofia project is a remarkable achievement. 

Sofia was formerly known as Dogger Bank B, one of four Dogger Bank wind farms that were awarded consent in 2015. When RWE took Dogger Bank B over in 2017, it renamed it Sofia. When complete, Sofia will have the capacity to power 1.2 million UK homes. It’s expected to be fully online in 2026.

The RecyclableBlade technology was developed in Aalborg, Denmark, and all of the recycled blades are manufactured in Hull in the UK.

Photo: Siemens Gamesa

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