One of Germany's biggest utilities, RWE, said Friday it will erect 150 to 180 wind turbines off the German coast, creating a wind farm with 960 megawatts of capacity, according to dpa. German plans to generate electricity offshore have lagged. So far, 19 smaller offshore farms have been approved, but work is only just starting on the first of them. Environmentalists and tourism groups generally oppose projects close to shore, calling them eyesores. RWE's North Sea project, sited 40 kilometres off the coast where the Netherlands and Germany are neighbours, would be the biggest in Germany waters, RWE said at its head office in Essen. "This quantity is enough to supply electricity to at least 780,000 households," RWE said. The company was in negotiations with German wind-turbine company Repower, mainly owned by Suzlon of India, to build the towers, each with a capacity of 5 to 6 megawatts. RWE has taken over the project from a smaller company and has renamed the farm "Innogy Nordsee 1." The water in the 150-square-kilometre zone, 40 kilometres north of the North Sea island of Juist, is 26 to 34 metres deep. RWE said German rules force it to build further out to sea than in another nations which are using offshore wind. The first wind turbines should start running as early as 2011, the company said. The total investment for the project would be around 2.8 billion euros, RWE chief executive Juergen Grossmann said.
