The wind park Blaiken is one of four Swedish projects nominated for support from the EU NER300-program, one of the world’s largest programs providing funding for renewable energy.
– “A support can mean a big step forward for the development of wind energy in cold climates”, says Stefan Skarp, Skellefteå Kraft.
150 people are currently working intensively to make the wind park ready before the winter arrives. The park, that will be one of Europe’s largest, is taking shape in the Blaiken area, in the north of Sweden. Divided into three phases, a total of 90 wind turbines will be built at the site. 30 to go up this year in Phase 1 and 30 more will be built next year in Phase 2. A decision on the third and final phase of 30 turbines will be taken at the end of 2012.
The wind farm at Blaiken currently has a system to prevent icing already in place but has also been, as one of four Swedish projects, nominated for EU support to further develop the technology.
More than half of the Nordic area has the type of climate that requires systems to prevent icing on wind turbine blades. But Blaiken is special.
“The climate here is really extreme, but we have good wind conditions”, says Mikael Lindmark.
Harsh winds and large amounts of snow are a normal part of the winter up in the mountains and that makes it a hard place to work. About 40 km of road has been built for it to be possible to get all the materials to the site and manage the maintenance of the turbines. But despite the investment in infrastructure Mikael Lindmark believes that they will need tracked vehicles to get to the towers during winter. “Previously, it’s almost exclusively been only the Swedish military that has had to work in similar conditions, so its a big challenge”, says Lindmark.
The wind park has turbines from Nordex and expects to be fully completed in 2015. The annual output will amount to approximately 700 GWh / year once all the three phases have been completed. This corresponds to the annual electricity consumption of 150,000 Swedish apartments.