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First monopile installed on world’s largest single offshore wind farm – Hornsea 3
18/5/2026
News
The first of 197 XXL foundation monopiles has been installed at Ørsted’s Hornsea 3 wind farm, located 120 km off the coast of Norfolk, UK. Once fully commissioned, the 2.9 GW project will be capable of powering more than 3.3 million UK homes and will be the single largest offshore wind farm in the world.
This is the latest phase of Hornsea 3’s offshore construction programme, following the successful installation of the first offshore converter station and the pulling of the first offshore export cable on to land to meet its onshore counterpart earlier this year.
Each of the wind turbine foundations weighs an average of 1,670 tonnes and is 90 metres in length. The XXL monopiles are the largest used by Ørsted on any of its European wind farms to date. Each will be topped by a 15 MW turbine supplied by Siemens Gamesa. The other 196 monopiles will be installed over the course of 2026 and into 2027.
In related news, Mubadala Investment, an Abu Dhabi sovereign investor, has announced a $325mn investment in Hornsea 3. It is investing alongside a consortium led by Apollo-managed funds, which includes USS and La Caisse. The investment follows Apollo Funds’ acquisition in late 2025 of a 50% stake in Hornsea 3. Ørsted retains the remaining 50% ownership and will continue to lead the development, construction and operation of the project.
Ørsted’s sale of a 50% stake in the Hornsea 3 project followed a period of continued cost pressures across the wind sector’s global supply chains and political headwinds in the US. The Danish wind developer had paused the planned development of the Hornsea 4 wind project in May 2025, stating that increased supply chain costs and higher interest rates, coupled with rising construction and operational risks, had made the project financially unviable in its current form. Then, in October 2025, Ørsted unveiled plans to slash its global workforce by a quarter – some 2,000 jobs – by the end of 2027, as it refocused attention on offshore wind projects in Europe as part of a wider restructuring plan.
Meanwhile, offshore wind is seen as a critical component of the UK government’s clean power plans, with a target of 43–50 GW of offshore wind in operation by 2030. A record 8.4 GW of offshore wind capacity was secured under the government’s latest contracts for difference (CfD) Allocation Round 7 (AR7) in January 2026, marking the largest single offshore wind procurement of its kind in Europe to date. Of the total capacity awarded under AR7, 8.2 GW went to fixed-bottom offshore wind projects, with a further 192.5 MW allocated to floating offshore wind.
