ABB has won an order worth around $700 million, the largest power transmission order in its history, from transpower, the German transmission grid operator. It will supply an 800 MW link to connect offshore wind farms in the North Sea DolWin1cluster to the mainland German grid.
ABB will deploy its HVDC Light transmission technology to carry 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. At 320 kV this will be the highest voltage level of extruded cable ever used for HVDC.
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.
Scheduled to be operational in 2013, this network of offshore wind farms is expected to avoid three million tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year by replacing fossil-fuel based generation. Germany currently meets about eight percent of its electricity requirements with wind power and expects to double that by 2020.
This is the second HVDC Light offshore wind connection supplied by ABB in Germany, the first being the BorWin1 project, the most remote offshore wind farm in existence.
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