German utility company Stadtwerke München (SWM) has bought a 30% stake in RWE Innogy’s Liverpool Bay wind farm Gwynt Y Mor.
According to industry sources, the company has been looking for a finance partner to share the £2bn offshore wind investment required for well over a year. Wind turbine manufacturer Siemens has also bought a 10% stake in the project.
The wind farm known as GYM will comprise 160 wind turbines with a huge 576 Megawatts installed capacity. Over 1000 construction jobs are expected to be created in 2011 with hundreds more jobs created when the wind farm starts generating green electricity in 2013.
A RWE spokesperson said “Construction will begin in 2011 and will be completed in 2014 but there will be power output in 2013.
There will be on going requirement for ever more jobs and it’s in our interests to use local labour and workers as its more efficient.”
Dr. Kurt Mühlhäuser, Chairman of the SWM Board said “The SWM have an ambitious goal: By 2015 we want to generate green electricity in its own plants so much that 800,000 households in Munich could be supplied.“. The green electricity supply motives for the SWM purchase are interesting – particularly given there is no electricity grid link up between North Wales and Munich…
