Kårehamn

Kårehamn is a small operational offshore wind farm in the Baltic Sea off the island of Öland that delivers 48 MW from 16 Vestas V112 machines. Built for E.ON and commissioned in October 2013, the park occupies shallow water several kilometres offshore and was notable for being one of the earlier Swedish offshore projects where concrete gravity-base foundations were used instead of driven piles. Construction encountered hard, rocky seabed conditions that made crane positioning difficult; to overcome this the contractor installed local gravel platforms beneath the crane positions and deployed substantial rock and stone protection around the bases. Installation used specialist vessels including the jack-up MPI Discovery and involved a mix of contractors for foundations, ballast and cable works. Nearshore and export cabling was delivered as a turnkey scope, with specific trenching and rock-protection solutions for the shallow landfall. Since commissioning the plant has been operated from a local base in Kårehamn and has been reported to produce on the order of 180–194 GWh/year (variously reported) — enough to serve several tens of thousands of homes depending on the source. The project has been referenced in operator and supplier material over the years (E.ON, RWE, contractors and cable suppliers); more recent corporate pages list the park under Aneo’s project portfolio. Sources give consistent technical and construction details but differ slightly on annual production and phrasing of ownership/operation.