• Consortium leader Siemens to supply HVDC transmission technology
• Consortium partner Petrofac responsible for construction and installation of platform
• 900 megawatt (MW) BorWin3 grid connection to supply nearly one million German households with electricity from wind energy
• Completion planned for 2019
Siemens receives an order from TenneT for an offshore wind farm grid connection in the North Sea. In a consortium with Petrofac Siemens will supply the complete technology for efficient direct-current transmission for the BorWin3 grid connection as the consortium leader. The consortium partner Petrofac, with over 30 years of experience as a leading EPC contractor to the international oil and gas industry, will be responsible for the construction and offshore installation of the project’s platform. Supply and laying of the cables was tendered separately by TenneT and is therefore not part of the consortium’s scope of supply.
The BorWin3 grid connection, with a transmission capacity of 900 megawatts (MW), is the fifth order that Siemens has received from the German-Dutch transmission grid operator TenneT for connection of offshore wind farms in the North Sea. “BorWin3 will supply nearly one million German households with clean electricity from wind power. We can now fully apply our broad experience gained in our first four pioneer projects in the North Sea to this project”, declared Karlheinz Springer, CEO of the Power Transmission Division of the Siemens Energy Sector. Commencement of commercial operation of Borwin3 is scheduled for 2019.
The scope of supply includes the entire high-voltage equipment of the grid access system as well as the complete onland station. Both converters, which are meant to turn the alternating current into the direct current one and then back again, constitute an essential part of the installation. In addition to this, Siemens supplies two power transformers per station at a rating of about 670 MVA as well as the entire air and gas insulated high-voltage switchgear equipment. Furthermore, Siemens is in charge of the overall construction works of the onland station. The high-voltage direct current (HVDC) converter modules are going to be designed, manufactured and tested at the Siemens converter factory in the city of Nuremberg. The technology applied here is well-proven and it is already successfully used in four offshore projects by Siemens. The power transformers are also manufactured by Siemens at the factory in Nuremberg.
