Operations Other

On the night of 17-18 March 2026, the turbines at Hollandse Kust Zuid were slowed to a near standstill (capped at approximately two rotations per minute) as part of a Dutch-coast-wide start/stop procedure designed to give passing migratory birds a safe corridor across the southern North Sea. The intervention was coordinated by Vattenfall together with other offshore wind operators and the responsible Dutch authorities, with the timing triggered two days in advance from weather data and radar predictions of peak bird-migration intensity. Under the procedural framework the start/stop curtailment can be invoked up to roughly 60 hours per year. The 17-18 March event marked the first triggered curtailment of the season at Hollandse Kust Zuid and reflected the project's commitment to nature-inclusive operations alongside its biodiversity programme of artificial reefs and openings in the monopile foundations. The shutdown was an operational, not commercial, intervention - lost generation falls within the agreed cost of the biodiversity protocol.