Dogger Bank Wind: Investing in the World’s Largest Offshore Farm

In the world of renewable energy, solar has definitely taken the lead, thanks to its ease of deployment, constantly declining costs, and overall improvements in photovoltaic technology. However, the other major renewable, wind power, is also still making progress.

This is important, as wind power can provide energy when solar is at its weakest, notably at night and in winter. This is especially true for offshore wind power generation, which benefits from the steadier nature of offshore wind streams.

The world’s largest offshore wind farm, the Dogger Bank Wind Farm, started producing electricity in 2023. It is now seeing its phase B entering the commercial stage in early 2026, with phase C to follow.

When fully built, Dogger Bank Wind Farm will have a capacity of 3.6 GW, or almost as much as four nuclear reactors.

One company in particular, GE Vernova, has been instrumental in building this megaproject, providing the Haliade-X 14.7MW turbines, which incorporate top-notch engineering as well as digital technology and power technology.

Global Wind Power Growth and Outlook

Wind power generation has been steadily rising in capacity and total production, moving from 834 TWh (Terawatt-hours) in 2016 to 2,531 TWh in 2024. However, this still falls short of the targeted 7,114 TWh in 2030 to reach a net-zero scenario tackling climate change and CO2 emissions seriously.

Source: IEA

So far, China has been the leader in wind power, both in the production of wind turbines and in the deployment of this technology, with more than half of the global wind power capacity. A lot of China’s installations of wind farms have been offshore, with total capacity doubling between 2022 and 2024, from 30.9 GW to 62 GW.

However, the largest wind power potential, and the one with the most useful profile to balance out solar energy, is offshore wind. And this is a domain where the region with the greatest potential is by far the European Union, with up to 33,844 TWh potential energy generation from offshore wind, a potential that has been mostly untapped until now.

Source: IEA

The EU has such a large offshore wind potential in large part because of its geography, with many shallow waters exposed to strong winds all year round, especially around the North Sea, Baltic Sea, and other northern waters like the English Channel.

This is why projects like the Dogger Bank Wind Farm are important, not only to reduce carbon emissions but also to demonstrate that the technology is mature enough to be profitable and to become the blueprint for further and even larger deployment of offshore wind turbines.

“Offshore wind is critical to generating renewable, efficient energy that can power British homes from British seas. I’m proud that this country is already a world leader in reaching Net Zero by 2050, and by doubling down on the new green industries of the future, we’ll get there in a way that’s both pragmatic and ambitious.”

UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak

(You can read more about wind power technology, limits, and potential in our article “Can Wind Power The World?”)

Dogger Bank Wind Farm: Project Overview

The project will be built over the Dogger Bank area, a shallow sand bank in the North Sea between the English coast and continental Europe. The site was selected because it allows traditional fixed foundation wind turbine designs, thanks to the shallow waters. As such, it is both technically simpler and cheaper than the equivalent capacity built with floating wind turbines.

Source: Dogger Bank

The two offshore wind turbine parks closest to the shore are Dogger Bank A & B, with C located more to the East, and all are connected to the UK grid via two offshore power cables connecting to two separate converter stations. A Dogger Bank D is also being considered with an additional 2 GW capacity.

“It’s a momentous engineering achievement and landmark moment to see Dogger Bank exporting its first power onto the grid. When operational as the world’s biggest wind farm, its turbines will play a key role supplying Britain with green, homegrown energy.”

John Twomey, director of customer connections at National Grid

The entire three-phase project is expected to be fully operational by 2027, and has created more than 2,000 UK jobs in relation to the construction and operation activities of Dogger Bank.

“Coastal communities in the north of England and beyond are benefitting from the new industrial opportunities which offshore wind is providing. This shows that the Government is right to press ahead with policies to increase our energy security by ensuring that vital new clean energy projects can be built faster”.

Dan McGrail – Renewable UK’s Chief Executive

The project was initiated in 2010, and the Forewind consortium was selected in 2010 to develop the project, bringing together four companies: The UK SSE (SSE.L), German Innogy (Owned by E.ON – EOAN), Norwegian Equinor (EQNR -0.63%), and Norwegian public utility Statkraft.

In 2017, the consortium was disbanded, with SSE and Statoil (now Equinor) taking over three projects and Innogy (formerly RWE) taking the fourth.

The project was initially even more ambitious than its current iteration, aiming for 9 GW of power before being downscaled to 3.6 GW. In total, the surface occupied by the project will be a massive 1,700 km², larger than Greater London, and will contain 277 turbines.

This makes this new wind farm more than 2.5x the size of the largest offshore wind farm currently in operation.

Each of phases A and B will use 95 GE Vernova Haliade-X 13 MW offshore wind turbines, while phase 3 will use the even more modern Haliade 14 MW turbines.

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Engineering Challenges of Dogger Bank

Surviving The North Sea

The first difficulty in building the Dogger Bank Wind Farm is its location. The same conditions that make it an ideal location for wind power generation also make it a very difficult environment to work in.

The North Sea is notorious for being one of the harshest offshore areas in the world, with oil rigs operating in the region requiring special designs to survive the storms, winds, and massive waves.

So the construction requires the Jan De Nul Group‘s newest jack-up installation vessel, Voltaire, the largest offshore jack-up installation vessel ever built, with a crane lifting capacity of 3,200 tons.

Source: Jan De Nul Group

The Voltaire is also the first seagoing installation vessel of her kind to be an Ultra-Low Emission vessel (ULEv), thanks to a selective catalytic reduction system and a massive diesel particulate filter.

“The scale and characteristics of the offshore Dogger Bank turbines offer the perfect challenge for this next-generation state-of-the-art jack-up installation vessel.”

Jan Van Impe – Manager Jan De Nul Offshore Renewables

In addition to the Voltaire, the Dogger Bank Wind Farm also contracted a turbine installation vessel from Seaway7, a part of the Subsea7 Group (SUBC.OL).

Similarly, high-quality cable-laying equipment and foundation material had to be used to ensure the wind turbines and cables would be firmly anchored to the sea floor and safe from the brutal North Sea storms.

HVDC Electrical Connection

This project is also the first time High-Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) transmission technology is used to connect a British wind farm to National Grid’s UK energy network.

HVDC is a superior option to traditional power transmissions for long-distance, high-capacity transmission, making it ideal for connecting distant offshore power generation or connecting different grids over long distances. HVDC loses only about 3.5% of power per 1,000 km, compared to roughly 6.7% for AC lines.

The line uses Hitachi Energy’s HVDC Light transmission system, which was deployed in a record time of 38 months.

Even more impressive, Dogger Bank Wind Farm includes the world’s first unmanned offshore HVDC substation platform at the site itself.

“We are proud to be the technology partner for the Dogger Bank Wind Farm project, with HVDC being the force multiplier for the clean energy transition, increasing access to an energy system that is more sustainable, flexible and secure.”

Claudio Facchin – Chief Executive Officer at Hitachi Energy

Advanced Wind Turbines

Wind turbines have been getting bigger and bigger over time, because the physics of these machines encourage making them as large as the engineering and material tolerance allows. This is because doubling the length of the blades increases the total swept area by 4x and therefore the energy generation. So quadrupling the size increases production by 16x compared to the initial size.

Source: DoE

The Haliade-X offshore turbines are being provided by GE Vernova, the branch of GE in charge of energy generation (gas and wind turbines, mostly) after the venerable conglomerate was split in 3 separate parts.

These turbines have a rotor diameter of 220 meters (720 feet), with each blade 107 meters (350 feet), creating a sweep area of 38,000 m². They are also ultra-resistant to storm winds, as they are typhoon-certified.

“We are honored to have been able to provide the first of a next generation of 13MW+ turbines for this historic project, reinforcing the critical role of technology innovation in meeting the challenges of climate change.”

GE Vernova Offshore Wind CEO Jan Kjaersgaard”

These turbines are so powerful that one single blade rotation produces enough energy to power an entire household for 48 hours, with one single turbine enough to power over 20,000 households.

These turbines also deploy a revolutionary “digital twin” technology for their diagnostic system. This allows for remote, real-time monitoring of each component.

This not only improves durability and reduces maintenance but also utilizes AI-driven analytics and real-time feedback to tune control loops, maximizing energy capture even at low wind speeds while minimizing mechanical loads during high-wind gusts.

As the actual lifespan of the largest wind turbines in real-life conditions created a mini-crisis for the industry in 2023, this improvement will likely be essential in keeping the turbines functional for longer, reducing their overall levelized cost of electricity (LCOE).

The North Sea Wind Power Hub Vision

The Dogger Bank Wind Farm is, in the long run, likely going to be a stepping stone toward a massive power generation and offshore electric grid hub for all of Western Northern Europe.

Dutch, German, and Danish electrical grid operators are cooperating in a project called the North Sea Wind Power Hub. The initial idea was to create artificial islands at the northeast end of the Dogger Bank, near the point where the borders between the territorial waters of the Netherlands, Germany, and Denmark come together.

The first artificial island will have an area of six square kilometers (2.3 square miles).

The project has since evolved toward a modular and phased distributed hub concept.

Source: North Sea Wind Power Hub

The goal will be the production of power to both be transmitted to the national power grids and to produce green hydrogen, roughly split 50/50. This way, periods of high wind and low power demand can consistently redirect surplus toward producing green hydrogen at cheaper costs.

Ultimately, this project could represent a total power capacity of as much as 110 GW of wind power generation, with the current Dogger Bank Wind Farm only the pilot project and a mere few percent of the total goal to hit by 2050.

Source: North Sea Wind Power Hub

How to Invest in Offshore Wind Growth

GE Vernova

As the provider of the wind turbine for the project, Dogger Bank Wind Farm will be the premier test case for GE Vernova’s independent stock performance since it split from the rest of the GE conglomerate.

GE Vernova can be seen as the true heir of the initial GE company, which was built over the production of turbines, first for hydropower plants, and today for gas and wind turbines.

All over the world, 55,000 wind turbines and 7,000 gas turbines are currently operating, based on the company’s technology base. These turbines, along with many hydro and nuclear power plants’ turbines, generate approximately 25% of the world’s electricity.

Source: GE Vernova

This makes GE Vernova not just a leader in wind turbines, but any energy generation method that requires a turbine to spin, which is virtually all methods save for photovoltaics.

Besides wind power, GE Vernova provides other energy solutions related to the green transition, like battery energy storage systems, synchronous condensers, pumped storage power plants (PSPP), furnace electrification, thermal storage, solar inverters, hydrogen compressors, etc.

GE Vernova is also a powerhouse in energy-related R&D ($1B in annual R&D spending), notably with carbon sequestration, HVDC cables, hydrogen gas turbines, etc.

GE is a close partner to many of the world’s largest utility companies and ultimately the backbone of their respective country or region’s electricity systems, including French Engie, American Duke Energy (DUK -0.86%), Southern Company (SO -0.78%), German RWE, Spanish Iberdrola, Taiwan Power Company, etc.

Source: GE Vernova

Lastly, GE Vernova is also involved in the other most promising low-carbon energy generation technology, nuclear SMRs (Small Modular Reactors), with its BWRX-300 design, which won the first North American commercial contract for an SMR, signed with Ontario Power.

Because of the breadth of GE Vernova’s activity, GE Vernova is a good stock to consider for investors betting on the trend of electrification, without having to bet on whether the ultimate winning technology in a low-carbon economy is wind, hydropower, nuclear, or hydrogen, as the company is active and leading in all these fields at once.

(You can read more about GE Vernova in our investment report dedicated to the company.)

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