Germany has marked a milestone in the development of its offshore wind power industry with the startup of the alpha ventus wind farm in the North Sea.

A consortium of E.On, Vattenfall and RWE says that the first three of the wind farm’s 12 wind turbines have supplied electricity to the German power grid. A further five turbines have already been completed and the consortium expects that all 12 units will be in operation by the end of 2009.

The construction of alpha ventus began in April 2009 after a first attempt had to be aborted in August 2008 due to bad weather conditions. The delays are reported to have increased the project’s cost from $270 million to $357 million.

The new wind farm is equipped with six Repower 5M turbines and six Areva Multibrid M5000 units. Its installed generating capacity when complete will be 60 MW.

“The wind turbines ‘AV 8’, ‘AV 9‘ and ‘AV 12’ are currently undergoing the so-called adjustment phase,” said Wilfried Hube, the overall project leader of alpha ventus. “As the name suggests, during this phase all the functions of the turbines are technically inspected and adjusted for the subsequent long-term operation.”

“The adjustment phase is followed by a period of so-called trial operation,” continued Hube. “In this phase, the wind turbines are subjected to various test scenarios, such as operating under full load at different wind speeds. The test scenarios described last for several hundred hours. Only once these have been completed will a wind turbine be fully operational.”

In spite of the delays to the project, the successful startup and operation of Alpha Ventus will serve as a springboard for the investment of billion of Euros in the offshore wind industry in Germany, according to the country’s government, which has set ambitious targets for offshore wind development.

Renewable energy development in Germany is supported by feed-in tariffs and the country has so far installed 24 000 MW of wind power capacity – all of it onshore. The government wants to have 20 000-25 000 MW of offshore wind capacity by 2030.

The German government believes that the offshore wind industry could create 30 000 new jobs.