Borkum Riffgrund 1

Borkum Riffgrund 1 is Ørsted’s first German offshore wind farm, a 312 MW project located in the German North Sea roughly 54–55 km north of the Lower Saxony coast and about 37 km north of Borkum. The park was built with 78 Siemens SWT‑4.0‑120 turbines and entered commercial operation in 2015. The project is notable for piloting a suction‑bucket jacket foundation at one turbine position while the remainder use monopiles, a demonstration of alternative foundation technology in the German EEZ. Construction began with the offshore substation installation in 2013 and foundation and turbine works in 2014–2015; mitigation measures such as a three‑fold bubble‑curtain were used during pile driving. The wind farm’s offshore substation collects the 34 kV turbine output and steps it to 155 kV AC for export; export cables link the OSS into the DolWin transmission cluster and the DolWin1 HVDC system that connects to the onshore Dörpen West converter. Commercially, the project was developed by Ørsted (formerly DONG Energy) with institutional co‑investors; Ørsted retained a 50% stake while other owners have changed through divestment activity (notably a 50% stake sale to Greencoat Renewables announced in 2022). Operationally the site has been used to provide ancillary balancing services to the German grid. The project helped establish early supply‑chain and O&M footprints for Ørsted in Germany and served as a stepping stone for adjacent, larger cluster developments.