North Sea Offshore Wind Platform HelWin1 Operational

Written by Martin Lynch, European News Editor for Industrial Info (Galway, Ireland) - Windfarm projects in the North Sea have received a welcome boost as Siemens AG (NYSE:SI) (Munich, Germany) has handed over the second of five power connection platforms to owner TenneT TSO BV (Arnhem, Netherlands), the Dutch transmission system operator (TSO).

The company has delivered the 576-megawatt (MW) HelWin 1 offshore wind grid connection platform located in the German North Sea. It comes less than a fortnight after the company delivered the first platform, the 800 MW BorWin2 platform to TenneT. Both are designed to transmit power from a growing number of offshore windfarms in the region to the mainland. For additional information, see February 6, 2015, article - North Sea Power Platform Completed.

The handover of HelWin1 was preceded by several weeks of test operations. The platform will service the two offshore wind farms of Nordsee Ost (295 MW) and Meerwind Sued/Ost (288 MW) located north of the island off Helgoland. Power totalling 250 MW has already been successfully transmitted via HelWin1's 130 kilometer (km) long HVDC subsea cable to the mainland where it travels another 45km to the Büttel substation in the German region of Schleswig-Holstein for transfer to the electricity 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."

HelWin1 marks the fifth connection that TenneT has established at sea and there are another seven grid connection systems under construction. Two of those - the 864 MW Sylwin 1 and 690 MW HelWin 2 platforms -- are due to go live in the first half of this year. TenneT expects at least 7,100 MW of connection capacity to be constructed in the North Sea by 2019.

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