Offshore windfarm Borssele III&IV, located in the North Sea off the Dutch coast, is now fully operational, the Blauwwind consortium of shareholders announced during an online ceremony on 18 February. The construction of the 731.5 MW wind farm, with a total of 77 V164-9.5 MW turbines produced by Vestas, was completed on-time, with official commissioning on 6 January 2021.
The Blauwwind consortium, currently consisting of Partners Group, the global private markets firm (acting on behalf of its clients), (45%), Shell (20%), Diamond Generating Europe (15%), Van Oord (10%) and Eneco (10%), won the tender by the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs in December 2016. Financial close and project sanction was achieved in June 2018, and the first monopile was installed in October 2019. The wind farm is expected to produce roughly 3.000 Gwh/y, which is equivalent to the annual power use of 825 000 Dutch households. Shell Energy Europe Limited and Eneco have secured contracts to each sell 50% of the power produced. Maintenance and operations will be done from a permanently manned service operations vessel which has her home base in Oostende, Belgium.