The last turbine at RWE’s Kaskasi wind farm has now been installed 35 kilometers north of the German island of Heligoland, the German company said Tuesday.
Kaskasi is RWE’s sixth wind farm off the German coast. According to the company, more than two thirds of the Kaskasi wind farm’s 38 turbines are already feeding electricity into the grid.
The entire wind farm is to be operational by the end of the year. Then, Kaskasi will be capable of supplying electricity to the equivalent of over 400,000 households per year. This is comparable to the number of households in a large city such as Frankfurt am Main, RWE said.
According to RWE, wind farms like Kaskasi can supply electricity for at least 25 years, and, the company said, until now it was a challenge to recycle rotor blades, due to the composite materials used in the rotor blades being cast in resin, making them difficult to separate after decommissioning.
However, at RWE’s Kaskasi wind farm, some of the turbines are now generating electricity with the world’s first recyclable rotor blades.
"The unique feature of the Siemens Gamesa RecycableBlade is its innovative resin, which is the first to allow the component materials to be separated from one another thanks to its special chemical structure. The separation process protects the properties of the materials, allowing them to be reused in other applications – for example, in the automotive industry or in consumer goods such as suitcases and flat screen casings," RWE said.