Iberdrola USA has opened its first offshore wind farm, a 389 MW facility located in the Irish Sea.

The firms sister company ScottishPower Renewables, in conjunction with Dong Energy of Denmark, opened the wind farm, which is about 12.5 miles off the seaport of Barrow-in-Furness in North West England.

The joint owners officially commissioned the $2.6 billion project.

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Iberdrola Chairman Ignacio Galán said: "West of Duddon Sands is the first offshore wind farm in the UK to use such advanced construction methods. The combination of two highly sophisticated installation vessels working in tandem, and the support of the excellent fabrication facilities at Belfast, Northern Ireland, made this one of the most efficient offshore projects ever delivered in the UK."

More than 1,000 workers spent the last two years erecting the 108 Siemens turbines, connected through a 125-mile web of undersea cable in a 26-square-mile patch of the Irish Sea.

Each turbine has a rating of 3.6MW, and the wind farm has enough total capacity to meet the annual electricity demands of approximately 280,000 homes.

(CD/MH)