Qualla: Westermost Rough Wind Farm

Westermost Rough Wind Farm: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Eight kilometres off Withernsea, thirty-five squarish kilometres of North Sea are pinned down by tall white machines that turn the wind into electricity. Westermost Rough Wind Farm became operational in May 2015 and was the first commercial deployment anywhere of Siemens' gearless 6 MW direct-drive turbines - a quiet engineering milestone in a part of the sea already crowded with gas platforms, U-boat wrecks and the lights of east-coast fishing ports. The acronym of its original Danish developer, DONG Energy, would later embarrass the company so much it changed its name.

Westermost Rough Wind Farm: Total's Withdrawal, DONG's Bet

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Wind farms in UK waters come with histories before they come with turbines. The Westermost Rough site was originally awarded in 2003 to the French oil major Total during the Round 2 tendering process - the second wave of UK offshore wind leases issued by the Crown Estate. Total s...

Westermost Rough Wind Farm: The First Gearless Sixes

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Westermost Rough's significance to wind engineering is small but real: it was the first commercial wind farm anywhere in the world to use Siemens' gearless 6 MW turbines. A conventional wind turbine has a gearbox between the slow-turning rotor and the fast-spinning generator. The...

Westermost Rough Wind Farm: From DONG to Orsted

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In 2017, DONG Energy renamed itself Orsted - after the Danish physicist Hans Christian Orsted, who in 1820 discovered the connection between electricity and magnetism that makes every generator work. The reason for the renaming was more prosaic: DONG stood for Danish Oil & Natura...

Westermost Rough Wind Farm: What the Tide Does With Them

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Thirty-five turbines in a North Sea swell are an oddly delicate-looking thing. From the beach at Withernsea on a clear day you can see them as faint white verticals on the horizon, slowly turning. Closer in, they are huge: the rotor of a Siemens 6 MW spans 154 metres, more than t...