Suppliers ready to cut costs of wind farms

A MAJOR programme to cut the cost of offshore wind farms was announced yesterday.

Under the 30 million Offshore Wind Accelerator (OWA) scheme, designed by the Carbon Trust, the cost of transforming wind into usable energy should be reduced by 10 per cent.

The savings would mean the cost of every kilowatt hour of electricity produced by offshore wind farms would drop from 9p to 8p. Five international "major players" in the offshore wind industry have signed up to the plan.

Danish firm Dong Energy, German RWE Innogy, ScottishPower Renewable and Norwegian company StatoilHydro will join forces with the UK's Airtricity Developments to find ways of trimming the cost of running wind farms and increasing the amount of electricity that each turbine generates.

It is hoped that increasing the efficiency of collecting electricity from offshore wind farms will help the UK to reach its 2020 target of sourcing 20 per cent of its energy supply from renewable sources.

Wind power has been widely seen as having the most potential for generating enough energy to reduce the UK's reliance on fossil fuels, But the cost of harnessing its power has more than doubled in the past five years, hampering its use in Britain.

Mark Williamson, director of innovations at the Carbon Trust, said: "High costs and risks have been seriously holding back deployment.

"We've identified a range of opportunities to reduce costs, increase performance and improve the economic viability of offshore wind farms."

The new plans include using wind turbines that cost less to install and finding better ways to access the farms while they are being built, thereby minimising the amount of energy that is leaked as it travels from the turbine to the shore.