The blades of offshore wind turbines don’t kill birds because there aren’t many birds so far away from land. Their foundations, however, must be more solid than in onshore turbines because the wind is much stronger here. These blades are also much larger. Unfortunately, they get damaged very quickly because of the impact of salty sea water. We need to replace the blades with new ones very often.

The foundations of these towers reach the sea bed, so the water must be quite shallow. You cannot build them just anywhere. There are also other types of floating towers which have no connection with the sea bed. Those can work fine even very far from the coast.

There are smaller cables which connect turbines to an offshore substation. From there, two larger cables connect the substation to the land. We used many ships and divers to bury the cables under the sea bed and the work was extremely hard.

The substation collects electricity from all the turbines and sends it to land. It stands on tall towers that are connected with the sea bed. Our substation is very large and there are about 20 people who live here permanently. We look after the wind turbines, replace the blades, and do other tasks. When we need to travel to land, we use a ship or a helicopter.

An onshore substation gathers electricity from the underwater cables. The substation we send our electricity to is around 300 km away. Other onshore substations are even further from their offshore wind farms. An onshore substation converts electrical current and sends it through the power grid to many households, factories, and other places that need it.