German DolWin3 Offshore Grid Project Advances

---

Written by Martin Lynch, European News Editor for Industrial Info (Galway, Ireland) - One of Europe's leading offshore grid projects to connect German offshore windfarms to the country's electricity grid has been secured by Alstom.

Dutch company TenneT TSO BV (Arnhem, Netherlands), one of Germany's four grid transmission operators, has awarded the DolWin3 offshore contract, which will allow for the transmission of 900-megawatts (MW) of power to the grid from windfarms located in the DolWin cluster in the German North Sea. To date the company has invested more than €1 billion ($1.3 billion) in the DolWin interconnection projects and DolWin 3 will take the total amount of power being supplied from the North Sea to 6,200 MW. The DolWin cluster is based in the south-western region of the North Sea and the DolWin 3 project will be completed in 2017. It is the eighth grid connection project by TenneT to use high voltage direct current (HVDC) technology.

TenneT will be hoping that the new cable will help solve some of the offshore interconnection battles it has been having with a number of Germany's major energy companies, including energy companies including E.ON AG (OTC:EONGY) (Dusseldorf, Germany), RWE AG (OTC:RWEOY) (Essen, Germany) and Dong Energy A/S (Fredericia, Denmark). In December last year, the German government was driving through a law to drastically reduce the damages that transmission companies face for connection delays in an effort to bring an end to the offshore connection gridlock. For additional information, see December 11, 2012, article - Germany Fights Offshore Energy Gridlock.

"With this project, we help to take the energy turnaround another step forward and make it possible for offshore wind energy to make an important contribution to our future energy supplies", explained Lex Hartman, member of the board of TenneT. "With DolWin3 included, we will be able to supply a total of more than 6,000 MW of clean energy from the North Sea -- and we will be investing more than €7 billion overall in the energy turnaround."

Alstom will supply and construct both the onshore and offshore converter stations as well as the connecting cable systems for DolWin3. It will deliver energy via an 83 kilometer (km) undersea cable to the mainland where it will be fed through a 79km underground cable to the converter station in Dorpen/West in Lower Saxony.

Alf Henryk Wulf, CEO of Alstom Germany, commented: "One of the main challenges for the future of energy grids is to transport electricity from offshore wind turbines to the onshore grid with as few losses as possible. With DolWin3, we strengthen our position as a key partner in the German energy turnaround".

Industrial Info Resources (IIR), with global headquarters in Sugar Land, Texas, and eight offices outside of North America, is the leading provider of global market intelligence specializing in the industrial process, heavy manufacturing and energy markets. Industrial Info's quality-assurance philosophy, the Living Forward Reporting Principle™, provides up-to-the-minute intelligence on what's happening now, while constantly keeping track of future opportunities.