North Sea SylWin1 Offshore Platform Working

Written by Martin Lynch, European News Editor for Industrial Info (Galway, Ireland) The North Sea continued to cement its position as the world's leading offshore wind location as Siemens AG (NYSE:SI) (Munich, Germany) completed its third offshore grid connection platform of 2015.

The company has handed over the SylWin1 grid connection platform to TenneT TSO BV (Arnhem, Netherlands), the Dutch transmission system operator (TSO), making it the world's largest offshore grid connection.

Located 70 kilometers (km) west of the island of Sylt, it allows up to 864-megawatts (MW) of electricity generated from offshore wind power to be transmitted via a 200km subsea and underground cable link to a land-based station at Büttel. Three offshore windfarms - DanTysk, Butendiek and Sandbank - each with a capacity of 288 MW, are linked to SylWin1. The power supplied is enough for a million German households.

This is the third platform the company has commissioned in the past four months, having completed the 800 MW BorWin2 platform in January and the 576 MW HelWin1 platform in February. The Nordsee Ost and Meerwind Süd/Ost windfarms are linked to HelWin1 while BorWin2 takes power from the Global Tech 1 (400 MW) and Veja Mate (400 MW) windfarms. For additional information, see February 6, 2015, article - North Sea Power Platform Completed.

"This year we have completed the world's first three offshore grid connections with efficient direct-current technology - SylWin1, BorWin2 and HelWin1," explained Jan Mrosik, CEO of the Siemens Energy Management Division. "We also intend to put the fourth project HelWin2 into commercial operation as planned in the coming weeks."

"2015 is a special milestone year for TenneT", stated Lex Hartman, member of the managing board of TenneT TSO GmbH, "as we will be completing further offshore grid connections by the end of the year, meaning that all in all we will have implemented a capacity of more than 5,000 MW, or more than two-thirds of the offshore expansion goal set by the Federal German government by then."

The German government aims to expand its offshore wind capacity by 6,500 MW by 2020.

In total, Siemens has been awarded five North Sea grid connection projects by TenneT: HelWin1 (576 MW) and HelWin2 (690 MW) off of Helgoland, BorWin2 (800 MW) and BorWin3 (900 MW) off of Borkum and SylWin1 (864 MW) off of Sylt.

Industrial Info Resources (IIR), with global headquarters in Sugar Land, Texas, five offices in North America and 10 international offices, 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. To contact an office in your area, visit the Industrial Info "Contact Us" page.