LONDON, UK – A massive offshore wind project has been underway off the coast of England for over four years. Construction of Hornsea One started in January 2018, and generated its first power a year and a half later. Meanwhile, construction of neighboring Hornsea Two got underway, with that site first coming online last December. Now the project is at long last reaching completion: Hornsea Two is completing its final reliability runs and is expected to be fully commissioned by the end of this month.
Like almost everything else in the world, Hornsea Two was derailed by the pandemic. As Orsted, the the Danish energy firm behind the project, noted in their 2021 annual report, all was going according to plan until Covid’s highly infectious Omicron variant showed up, making it impossible for the company to get the necessary number of people on the vessels used for commissioning turbines.
They’ve caught up pretty quickly (though the delay did cause Orsted to take a financial hit—the company’s second-quarter report noted a negative impact from overhedging on Hornsea Two, to the tune of about 269 million Euros/268 million USD), no small feat given that the site spans 462 square kilometers (178 square miles) of ice-cold choppy water.
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