TenneT Takes Over SylWin1 Offshore Grid Connection

Siemens has handed over SylWin1, the third North Sea grid connection this year, to its customer TenneT.

The German-Dutch transmission grid operator has now put the world’s most powerful grid connection to date into commercial operation, Siemens said in a press release issued Friday, April 25.

The offshore platform of the SylWin1 grid connection is located around 70 kilometers west of the island of Sylt, after which the project was named.

The electricity generated by wind power is transmitted over a more than 200 km subsea and underground cable link to the land-based station Büttel. Up to 864 megawatts (MW) of green electricity can now be transmitted with this grid connection – enough to supply more than a million German households.

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

“2015 is a special milestone year for TenneT,” emphasized 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 government’s offshore expansion goal aims at implementing 6,500 MW by 2020.

The three offshore wind farms, DanTysk, Butendiek and Sandbank, each with a capacity of 288 MW, are linked to SylWin1. DanTysk and Butendiek both consist of 80 Siemens wind turbines, each rated at 3.6 megawatts. Sandbank will be realized with 72 Siemens wind turbines in the 4-megawatt class.

At present, more than 100 wind turbines are already linked to the grid connection, with new turbines being connected almost on a daily basis. Under optimal wind conditions, such as those which the low-pressure storm front Niklas brought with it recently, a capacity of 350 MW was already transmitted via the SylWin1 grid link.

The fourth grid connection HelWin2 is scheduled to take up commercial operation in the first half of 2015 as well. Siemens received its latest order for a grid connection in the North Sea, BorWin3, in a consortium with Petrofac in the spring of 2014. Commissioning of this fifth grid connection from Siemens is scheduled for 2019.

The grid connections implemented by Siemens for TenneT will have a total transmission capacity of more than 3.8 gigawatts (GW), providing electricity from offshore wind power to supply nearly five million households.

Image: Siemens