Surveys of the area that the Lithuanian Government selected for the country’s first offshore wind farm have shown that the seabed in the Baltic Sea is suitable for the development of this type of project.
The Lithuanian Energy Agency selected Geobaltic and Garant Diving to carry out the geophysical and seismic surveys through an international public procurement procedure.
The jointly contracted group presented its second seabed survey report which shows results and conclusions of deep geophysical-seismic surveys in the Lithuanian offshore area, where it is appropriate to organise tenders for the development and operation of the wind farm.
The goal of the surveys was to explore and assess whether the development of the planned wind farm overlaps with the exploration of other strategic energy resources and, potentially, oil production in the Lithuanian offshore territory.
The results show that the territory for the first Lithuanian offshore wind farm does not lie on any tectonic faults or geological structures that could be potential for oil extraction.
The 137.5-square-kilometre site in the Baltic Sea, which the Lithuanian Government identified two years ago , is located some 29 kilometres off the country’s coast, in water depth of around 35 metres.
It is planned that the wind power park will be able to create about 1,300 jobs, and could produce about 2.5-3 TWh of electricity per year, which would be almost a quarter of the current electricity demand of Lithuania. The 700 MW offshore wind farm project should be implemented in 2028.
In July, the Government deployed two EOLOS floating LiDARs at the site for a one-year campaign. The two buoys will measure wind, wave, and current properties as well as atmospheric pressure, air temperature, and relative humidity. The data collected is expected to be processed by the end of July 2023.
The auction for the developer of Lithuania’s first offshore wind farm is planned to be launched in the second half of 2023, with the project already decided to have an installed capacity of 700 MW and expected to be operational as early as 2028.