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Yttre Stengrund completely decommissioned

By: Tom Russell 25/01/2016 Vattenfall

General Turbines Windfarms

Vattenfall's Yttre Stengrund wind farm has been completely dismantled. The 10MW project was located in the Kalmar Sound, Sweden.

Work on dismantling the five NEG Micon wind turbines, each with a 2MW capacity, began at the end of November. The wind farm had been in operation since 2001 and had been owned by Vattenfall since 2006. Vattenfall stated that the decision to dismantle the entire wind farm rather than replacing the turbines with new, more modern ones was made on a financial and technical basis.

"The turbines that were installed at Yttre Stengrund were an early model and only about 50 of them in total were actually produced. The difficulty of getting hold of spare parts and the huge cost involved in upgrading the turbines and gearboxes meant that it wasn't financially viable to replace the turbines," says Maria Hassel, who project managed the dismantling operation for Vattenfall.

The job of removing and lifting down the rotor blades and the turbine housings fell to regional company Svensk Sjöentreprenad (SS). They also dismantled the five masts and cut the concrete foundations off level with the sea bed. There were no major issues with the work itself but the operation was delayed by a month due to bad weather, which was a major risk throughout the dismantling process.

Vattenfall stated that the work has been carried out with the necessary consideration for the environment, in accordance with the decisions made by the environmental authorities involved. Vattenfall plans to restore the site in such a way that any trace of the former wind farm will be negligible. Underwater cables will be removed in the summer of 2016.

Vattenfall stated that making the decision to decommission a wind farm when all of its investments in new generation are in renewable energy sources may seem odd however Hassel explained: "Yes, it may seem a bit of a contradiction in terms but Yttre Stengrund was one of our first wind farms and we've learnt a lot over the almost 10 years that we've been operating it. That knowledge, combined with the prohibitive cost and technical difficulty of replacing the turbines, made this a relatively straightforward decision. We have locations with better wind conditions in other parts of the country where we can build new wind power and take with us the knowledge we've gained from Yttre Stengrund."

For more information about the Yttre Stengrund project, please follow the links provided. You can also view the project on our interactive map.

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Yttre Stengrund completely decommissioned

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