Nordergründe OWF Finally Running

TenneT commissioned the grid connection for the Nordergründe offshore wind farm on 31 October, following the installation of the wind farm’s substation, whose fabrication encountered challenges that ultimately delayed the commissioning for a year.

Namely, wpd – the developer of the German 111MW project – postponed the commissioning of the project initially scheduled for late 2016, after BVT, the company in charge of building the substation, entered insolvency in the third quarter of 2016. The remaining works on the substation were carried out by several sub-contractors and the substation was installed in the second half of September.

TenneT had already completed the installation of the cable in the summer of 2016 and since then the seaward end of the cable in the wind farm area was ready to move into the substation. Now that the substation is in place, TenneT was able to move the subsea cable from the substation’s monopile foundation to the platform.

After connecting the cable to the substation, numerous tests and further works were carried out to prepare for the commissioning of the offshore grid connection. As of 31 October, the electricity from the 18-turbine wind farm has been flowing through TenneT’s connection to the mainland.

The grid connection point for the Nordergründe offshore project is the substation at Innhausen, north of Wilhelmshaven, which was expanded in 2012 for this purpose. Here, the power is transformed to 220kV and fed into the 220kV transmission network.

The installation of Senvion 6.2M126 turbines at the Nordergründe offshore wind farm was completed at the end of December 2016.

Offshore WIND Staff