Steel for green energy: Hornsea One offshore wind farm builds on heavy plate from Dillinger

Commissioning of the offshore wind farm off the coast of the United Kingdom in the North Sea is a groundbreaking step for the production of green electricity: Ørsted‘s Hornsea One is the first wind farm in the world with a capacity of more than 1 gigawatt. It generates enough wind power annually to supply well over one million homes in the UK with green electricity.

“Steel is indispensable for the sustainable production of renewable energies,” says Dillinger Chairman of the Board of Directors Tim Hartmann. “Without steel, there is no green energy.” Dillinger is already producing the steels today that are needed for the energy transition and climate reversal. Examples of applications for steel in addition to offshore wind power include onshore wind power, hydraulic steel structures and steels for ambitious infrastructure projects.

Located 120 km off the east coast of the United Kingdom, Hornsea One is further from the mainland than any other offshore wind farm completed to date. The park contains a total of 174 7-megawatt wind turbines and covers an area of 407 km2 –  an area larger than the island nation of Malta. And the dimensions of the wind turbines are also impressive: towering some 190 meters into the sky, with rotor blades that are 75 meters long and a rotor diameter of 154 meters, the wind turbines are larger in diameter than the London Eye Ferris wheel. Steel from Dillinger was used for the monopile foundation structures: The wind turbines stand in water depths of up to 40 meters on monopile foundations with diameters of up to 8.1 meters and a weight of 900 tons each. Dillinger supplied approx. 99,000 tons of thermomechanically rolled heavy plate steel for these turbines, in thicknesses ranging from 30 to 90 mm.

“It is our aim to produce steel using state-of-the-art and sustainable methods and to contribute in this way to the energy transition,” Tim Hartmann said. “Steel is the material of the energy and mobility transition, which makes it imperative that the framework conditions for our steel in Europe are structured to be absolutely fair before the end of this year.” He added: “This includes reliable political conditions that include a fair framework for foreign trade, support for the transformation to carbon-free steel production, and sufficient green energy at competitive prices.”