Siemens wins maintenance contracts for offshore electric grid connections in the North Sea
+ + + Successful entry into the maintenance market for German offshore wind farm connections
21.10.2010 + + + After having won the orders to build the two North Sea grid connections HelWin1 and
BorWin2 in the summer of this year, Siemens has now also been contracted to carry out
their entire maintenance. The two contracts, awarded by the Dutch grid operator TenneT,
are Siemens’ first in the emerging field of offshore grid connection maintenance services
within Germany and are initially for a period of five years. The two connections provide
transfer capacity to the German mainland for several offshore wind farms in the North Sea.
Siemens will establish a service base in Lower Saxony close to the coastline for the
offshore and onshore converter stations. This enables Siemens to further expand its
comprehensive operation & maintenance service portfolio for electricity transmission
grids.
"The BorWin 2 and HelWin1 projects for integration of the offshore wind farms Veja Mate,
Global Tech I and Nordsee Ost into the onshore high-voltage transmission grid will benefit
from our many years of experience in this field. As the undisputed market leader, we have
so far received orders for connecting offshore wind farms with a rating totaling
approximately 4,800 megawatts. Now we are going to aggressively develop our maintenance
business in this field as well”, says Dr. Udo Niehage, CEO of the Power Transmission
Division within the Energy Sector at Siemens.
The services covered by the contract include preparing the maintenance schedules,
coordinating and executing inspections, preventive maintenances and repairs, and providing
the related logistics and spare parts management services. To ensure fast customer
response, Siemens will set up a service base in Lower Saxony close to the coastline and
will staff it with highly qualified personnel. The wind farms are located between 85 and
125 kilometers offshore, to the north-west of the islands of Borkum and Helgoland, and
pose special challenges in terms of maintenance and logistics due to their exposure to a
harsh maritime environment. The BorWin2 grid connection will have a transmission capacity
of up to 800 megawatts (MW) of clean electric power, HelWin1 a capacity of 576 MW. Both
connections will be built using high-voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission technology
with submarine cables, and are scheduled to be ready for operation in 2013.
Using HVDC technology reduces transmission losses significantly. High-voltage cable links
more than 80 kilometers long require HVDC for power transmission due to the fact that a
major portion of the electrical energy would be lost as reactive power with an AC
connection of that length and power rating. Siemens has developed HVDC Plus for precisely
such applications. This modular VSC technology reduces the complexity and thus the
installation space needed at offshore platforms.
For more information about the Siemens Wind Power portfolio click >
here
See also >
Siemens delivers 80 wind turbines for the DanTysk offshore wind power plant near Sylt
+ + + Large-scale German project sets a milestone in the commercial use of offshore wind power
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