$1bn mega-project will connect N. Sea wind farms to grid
In its largest power transmission order ever — worth around $1 billion — ABB will supply a power link for the Dutch-German transmission grid operator TenneT that will connect offshore North Sea wind farms to the German mainland grid.
The project will deploy the world’s largest offshore HVDC (high-voltage direct current) system with a rating of over 900 megawatts (MW), keeping electrical losses to less than 1 percent per converter station, according to ABB. The completed link will be able to supply clean wind energy to more than 1.5 million households.
Under the terms of the order, ABB will design, engineer, supply and install the offshore platform, the offshore and onshore converter stations and the land and sea cable systems. The company’s HVDC Light transmission technology will transport power from the 400-MW Gode Wind II and other wind farms to an offshore HVDC converter station, which will transmit the electricity to the onshore HVDC station at Dörpen on the German coast via 135 kilometers of underwater and underground cables. A converter station there will then feed that electricity into the mainland grid.
ABB says its HVDC Light transmission technology offers environmental benefits such as neutral electromagnetic fields and compact converter stations.
Scheduled to be operational in 2015, this offshore network is designed to help to avoid more than three million tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year by replacing fossil-fuel based generation with wind energy. Germany’s installed wind power capacity of over 27 gigawatts presently meets about eight percent of its electricity requirements. Plans are to double that by 2020. This is the third offshore wind connection order for ABB in Germany, following the 800-MW Dolwin1 link awarded last year and the previous BorWin1 project.
