ABB has won an order worth around $700 million, from the German transmission grid operator, transpower, to supply an 800-megawatt (MW) power link that will connect more offshore wind farms in the DolWin1cluster, located in the North Sea to the mainland German grid.
ABB will deploy its environmentally friendly HVDC Light (high-voltage direct current) transmission technology to transmit power from the 400 MW Borkum West II wind farm and other wind farms to be developed nearby. The wind farms will be connected to an offshore HVDC converter station which will transmit electricity to the onshore HVDC station at Dörpen, on the northwest coast of Germany via 165 km of underwater and underground DC cables. The Dörpen/West converter station will in turn feed AC power to the mainland grid.
At the same time, ABB will be responsible for system engineering, including design, supply and installation of the offshore platform, the offshore and onshore converter stations, and will also supply and install the sea and land cable systems.
The HVDC Light transmission systems offer various environmental benefits such as neutral electromagnetic fields, oil-free cables and compact converter stations. It is an ideal solution for connecting remote offshore wind farms to mainland networks, overcoming distance limitations and grid constraints, while ensuring robust performance and minimal electrical losses.
This project is scheduled to be operational in 2013 and the network of offshore wind farms is expected to avoid three million tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year by replacing fossil-fuel based generation.