Heavy plate from Dillinger for the Merkur offshore wind farm

Located in the North Sea, off the Dutch and German coasts, in the German Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) about 45 km (28 miles) north of the island of Borkum, the Merkur wind farm, covering an area of 47 km², is one of the largest wind farms in the North Sea and represents a major milestone in Germany's energy transition.

It consists of 66 wind turbines (total capacity of 396 MW) and generates approximately 1,750 GWh annually, enough clean energy to supply nearly half a million German homes and to eliminate over 566,000 t of CO₂ emissions.

Steel giants

These wind turbines generators impress not only with their innovative gearless technology (GE Haliade 150-6MW) but also with the size of the towers and foundations on which they are mounted more than 100 m over the water level. They are equipped with one of the largest rotors in the wind industry, having a diameter of 150 m (73.50 m long blades) and sweeping an area equivalent to three football fields. The towers weighing 400 t each are twice as high as the Statue of Liberty. At water depths of 27 to 33 m, they are installed on monopiles foundations with diameters of up to 8 m, lengths of up to 73 m and a weight of about 970 t each.

For these monopiles foundations, Dillinger supplied around 57,000 t of thermo-mechanically rolled heavy plates in thicknesses from 30 to 100 mm.

Furthermore around 10.000 t of Dillinger steel are used in the towers of this wind farm.

Transformer substation: Dillinger steel converts

Heavy plates from Dillinger have also been used for the construction of the farm’s transformer substation (2,700 t thermo-mechanically rolled plates in thicknesses from 16 to 90 mm).

Set up in a water depth of 25 m, this substation with a total weight of 4,200 t collects the energy from the wind farm’s 66 turbines, converts it to a higher voltage (from 33 kV to 155 kV) and sends it to a power transfer station. The electricity obtained is then transported through an underwater cable to its final destination.