Cuxhaven, 18.9.2009 The groundbreaking for a trial gravity foundation for offshore power plants took place today in Cuxhaven, Lower Saxony. The project is a decisive step toward the realisation of planned wind parks in the North Sea. Given the German government’s professed intention of promoting North Sea wind parks on a grand scale, STRABAG SE has declared the development and production of concrete foundations and the construction of wind energy facilities to be an important business field for the future. As a first step, STRABAG SE will build a trial gravity foundation based on a solution developed by STRABAG subsidiary Ed. Züblin AG. Roland Jurecka, member of the management board of Austria-based STRABAG SE, which will set up a production site for such foundations in the years to come, stressed the importance of the first prototype in original size, which will provide important insights and data for the planned production in series. He also thanked all those involved for the good work together, especially Mayor Arno Stabbert in his role as representative of the city of Cuxhaven.

In series production, the more than 7,000-tonne gravity foundations will be produced near the shore and transported by a special ship to their final location, where they will be lowered to the seafloor. The entire installation will be shipped as a single unit, the steel mast as well as the rotor blades being mounted to the gravity foundation on land in an industrial series production process. This reduces the amount of weather-dependent offshore installation works in comparison to all other concepts. The concrete foundations will be developed and produced by STRABAG Offshore Wind GmbH.

For STRABAG, the construction of the trial gravity foundation represents an opportunity to gather experience in a number of different aspects. In addition to insights regarding the optimisation of the construction process and the series production, the company expects the test phase to provide further information as to the behaviour of the building substrate in the North Sea.

In choosing the location for the trial gravity foundation, which is to be built in ground water, it was important that the characteristics of the site be as similar as possible to those of the future offshore wind facilities in the North Sea. The size and dimensions of the trial gravity foundation are close to those of the production-series foundations to be produced in Cuxhaven. The trial foundation is a cross-shaped box girder construction with exterior dimensions of 40 metres and will be equipped with extensive measuring systems. A load testing device consisting of steel wires will realistically simulate wind and wave stress during data measuring in long intervals.

Completion of the trial gravity foundation is planned for spring 2010. Series production is scheduled to begin in autumn of next year. Starting in 2011, the first wind turbines for the offshore wind power plant GlobalTech I are to be set up from Cuxhaven, representing the continued dynamic growth of the Offshore Basis Cuxhaven.