Qualla: Vindeby Offshore Wind Farm

Vindeby Offshore Wind Farm: Introduction

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Eleven turbines went up in eleven days. They stood in four metres of water, two kilometres off the north coast of Lolland, and each one produced 450 kilowatts — about enough, in modern terms, to be a rounding error on a single contemporary offshore machine. That was 1991, and nobody in the world had built anything like it. Every offshore wind farm since, from the North Sea to Taiwan to the coast of Massachusetts, descends from those eleven stubby white towers in the shallows of Smålandsfarvandet.

Vindeby Offshore Wind Farm: Nobody Had Tried It

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Elkraft, one of the predecessors of the company that became DONG Energy and is now Ørsted, started considering offshore turbines in 1987 and surveyed the waters around Lolland in 1989. Two years later, working with SEAS, it put the farm in the water for an estimated €10 million. ...

Vindeby Offshore Wind Farm: Small Machines, Carefully Sealed

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Bonus Energy supplied the eleven turbines, rated at 450 kilowatts each, for a total of just under five megawatts across the whole farm. Their annual output was reckoned to be equivalent to the consumption of two to three thousand Danish households. The engineering problem was not...

Vindeby Offshore Wind Farm: The Answer Came Back Yes

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Danish electricity sector was sceptical when the farm was built, and it did not stay sceptical for long. Within six years the argument had effectively been settled, because the offshore turbines were driving more energy production than comparable machines on land — steadier w...

Vindeby Offshore Wind Farm: Twenty-Five Years, 243 Gigawatt-Hours

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The original government concession ran twenty-five years, from 1991 to 2016. By 2016 the arithmetic had turned: the farm was well past its design life, the maintenance bill on twenty-five-year-old machinery kept climbing, and DONG Energy began considering shutting it down. The re...

Vindeby Offshore Wind Farm: What Was Left Over

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Taking a wind farm apart raises a question the industry is still working on. Most of Vindeby came back into use — the metals and the concrete in particular went straight into recycling streams. The blades were harder. Some were sent to Risø for examination, some were reclaimed by...