The 252 MW Seastar offshore wind farm in Belgium has been connected to Elia’s Modular Offshore Grid (MOG).
Seastar is part of the 487 MW SeaMade project which comprises 58 Siemens Gamesa 8.4 MW turbines.
The connection of the wind farm marks the completion of the MOG located 40km off Belgium’s coast.
The switching platform bundles together the export cables from the Rentel, Northwester 2, Mermaid and now the Seastar wind farms and transports the generated energy to the mainland via a shared transmission system.
It has been operational since September 2019, when it was connected to the Rentel wind farm.
Once all the projects are operational in late 2020, they will generate an estimated 8 TWh per year on average, equal to approximately 10% of Belgium’s total electricity demand.
The federal government has also begun developing a second-generation area for offshore wind power, which will boost the installed capacity in the Belgian part of the North Sea 4 GW by 2030.
“The connection of the last wind farm is a major milestone both for the Belgian offshore wind sector and for Elia. However, our work in the North Sea is far from over. We have started designing a new offshore power hub that will serve as a key link in the second generation area currently being developed,” said Chris Peeters , CEO of Elia Group.
“We also need to modify the onshore high-voltage grid to ensure that we can transport increasing volumes of electricity generated offshore to consumers, which is why Elia is working hard on the Ventilus and Hainaut Loop projects in the provinces of West Flanders and Hainaut respectively.”