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Tennet installs 2GW offshore capacity

By: Lewis Holdsworth 09/02/2015 TenneT

Converters General Grid Windfarms

In quick succession following the announcement on 4th February 2015, the transmission system operator TenneT completed a further off-shore grid connection. The HelWin1 connection is capable of transmitting 576 megawatts (MW) of offshore wind power from the German North Sea to the land, where the offshore wind power is fed into the transmission grid.

"With the completion of HelWin1, TenneT now provides around 2,000 MW of transmission capacity in the German North Sea," explained Lex Hartman, Member of the Board at TenneT TSO GmbH. "TenneT will therefore achieve a further milestone in terms of the offshore expansion targets of the German Federal Government. The capacity of HelWin1 corresponds to an output that is theoretically sufficient to supply around 700,000 private households in Germany."

Just a few days ago, TenneT finished the first large-category offshore connection with BorWin2 (800 MW). HelWin1 is now the second offshore grid connection system in this performance category which offers the possibility of connecting more than one offshore wind farm. This is already the fifth connection that TenneT has established at sea. Another seven grid connection systems are under construction, two of them will probably go into operation in the first half year of 2015; an invitation to tender has been issued for a further system. Overall, TenneT expects at least 7,100 MW of connection capacity to be constructed in the North Sea by 2019. TenneT is therefore in good time fulfilling nearly one third of the expansion targets of the German Federal Government of 6,500 MW by 2020.

The completion of HelWin1 was preceded by several weeks of test operations, which were recently successfully completed. The two allocated offshore wind farms of Meerwind Süd/Ost and Nordsee Ost have been connected and HelWin1 has already been able to transmit an infeed rate of over 250 MW from the sea to the land. Furthermore, the grid connection system HelWin1 has already been used successfully for grid support at the Büttel (Schleswig-Holstein) grid connection point - independently of the wind energy infeed capacity.

With HelWin1, a 130 kilometre-long direct current connection for offshore wind farms has been established north-west of Helgoland. A consortium consisting of Siemens and Prysmian as general contractors of TenneT had finished the construction of offshore and onshore converter stations in summer 2013.

The wind power produced offshore is transmitted as three-phase electric power to a con-verter platform (HelWin alpha in this case) operated by TenneT, converted to direct cur-rent and transmitted to an onshore converter station via a direct current cable. The con-verter station for HelWin1 was constructed in the Schleswig-Holstein town of Büttel (Dis-trict of Steinburg). Here, the DC power is converted back to three-phase electric power and fed into the extra high-voltage grid.

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Tennet installs 2GW offshore capacity

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