IJmuiden, 4 June 2008 – Today Econcern and Eneco have opened the Netherlands’s largest offshore wind farm. At this festive event, the wind farm (previously known as Q7) was renamed to “Princess Amalia Wind Farm”, after Princess Catharina-Amalia, the eldest daughter of Prince William-Alexander and Princess Máxima. This cleanest power plant supplies approximately 435 GWh of power, which is sufficient to provide 125,000 Dutch households with renewable energy.
Jeroen de Haas, chairman of the Board of Management of Eneco: “For Eneco, the realisation of this wind farm represents an important milestone in our sustainable strategy. In the next coming years Eneco will invest substantially in sustainable energy, a significant part of which will go to wind energy at sea. For the Netherlands the Princess Amalia Wind Farm is a good step towards the 6,000 MW of wind energy at the North Sea which should make a substantial contribution to achieving the Dutch energy and climate objectives.”
Ad van Wijk, chairman of the Board of Management of Econcern: “We have a clear strategy: we construct a new wind farm at sea every year. The opening of this wind farm is a good start. And naturally wind energy at sea is not the only winning technique, the sea offers many other possibilities for generating energy. By using 9% of the North Sea, we can provide clean power to all the surrounding countries. This contributes to accomplishing our mission: a sustainable energy supply for everyone.”
About Princess Amalia Wind Farm
The 60 wind turbines of 2 MW each are situated 23 kilometres from the coast in block Q7 off IJmuiden, in a water depth of 19 to 24 metres. Princess Amalia Wind Farm is thereby not only the world’s largest wind farm outside the “12 mile zone”, but also located the furthest from the coast and constructed in the deepest water. Yearly the wind farm supplies approximately 435 GWh of electricity, which is sufficient to provide 125,000 Dutch households with electricity and to avoid 225,000 ton of CO2 emissions.
Princess Amalia Wind Farm is the first offshore wind farm on the basis of so-called ‘non recourse’ project financing. This means that the involved banks, Dexia, Rabobank and BNP Paribas, trust that the income generated by the wind farm will completely cover the interest and instalments, without the requiring additional guarantees from the shareholders. This is an important milestone in the worldwide development of offshore wind farms.
More information on the website of the wind farm.