Following a three-day journey of Nordsee One’s substation platform from Aalborg, Denmark, a floating crane yesterday placed the 2,100-tonne substation onto a 50-meter tall foundation.
Matthias Esken , Package Manager for the substation, added: “I’m glad to report that the design and fabrication phase was successfully completed on schedule. With installation complete, we are now in the process of offshore commissioning with our suppliers Bladt Industries and Semco Maritime, out of our base harbor in Norderney.
“Looking ahead, in the upcoming weeks the grid operator, TenneT’s export cables and the inter-array will be installed. We will then commission all of the systems, so that we under current planning are ready in autumn for the connection of the wind turbines, which we plan to install early 2017.”
The 54 turbines will be connected to the offshore substation by ten strings of cables, with an overall length of approximately 70 kilometres. The offshore substation will transform the electricity generated by the 54 wind turbines at 33kV to a transmission voltage of 155kV. Submarine high-voltage cables will then transmit the electricity to the grid operator’s converter station, where the AC voltage is transformed to 320kV DC voltage and transmitted to the nearest grid access point at Hagermarsch.
Once completed, Nordsee One wind farm will have an overall installed capacity of 332MW. Under current planning, full commissioning of the wind farm is anticipated in 2017.
Nordsee One is owned by Northland Power Inc. (85%) and RWE International SE (15%).