Steel for the energy transition

The Borssele III and IV offshore wind farm was officially handed over yesterday. Together with the Borssele I and II offshore wind farms, which began operating in November 2020, and a smaller area used for innovative demonstration purposes, it  forms the 122 km² Borssele wind farm zone located about 22 km off the coast of Zeeland province, the Netherlands – regarded as a trailblazer for the energy transition. With a total capacity of around 1.4 GW, this is the largest wind farm zone in the Netherlands to date.

The 77 wind turbines of Borssele III and IV, with  a capacity of 730 MW, will supply approximately 825,000 Dutch households per year with environmentally friendly electricity, reducing more than 1 million tons of carbon emissions. The wind turbines are each mounted on 85-meter-long monopiles weighing 1,280 tons, at water depths between 16 and 38 meters. Dillinger supplied around 70,000 tons of thermomechanically rolled heavy plate for the monopile foundation structures, with plate thicknesses ranging from 12.7 to 88 mm. Some of the slabs reached record-breaking weights of more than 42 tons.