With enough capacity to power two-thirds of the homes in Kent, the set of 175 turbines rising out of the Thames estuary officially became the largest offshore windfarm in the world on Thursday.
The project is owned by Denmark's Dong Energy, Germany's E.On and Masdar, of Abu Dhabi. Its 630MW capacity, enough to power 470,000 homes, has been fully operational since April, but on Thursday it was officially opened, by the prime minister alongside the climate change minister, Greg Barker. The consortium predicts that the windfarm will save 925,000 tonnes of CO2 a year.
The London Array has taken the crown of the world's largest offshore windfarm from the 500MW Greater Gabbard project off the East Anglian coast. The UK currently has more than 3.6GW of offshore wind power capacity, but is expected to have around 18GW by the end of the decade.
Meanwhile, the last wind turbine was installed at the 325MW Thornton Bank offshore windfarm off the coast of Belgium, confirming that the project could now be expected to be commissioned in the coming weeks.
