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UNITED KINGDOM — The consortium of GE Renewable Energy’s Grid Solutions and Sembcorp Marine has been awarded the contract to supply an HVDC transmission system for RWE's offshore wind farm project Sofia.
Located in the North Sea, 121 miles off the coast of England, RWE’s Sofia wind farm is one of the world’s largest offshore wind projects. The farm is expected to generate enough wind energy to meet the electricity needs of almost 1.2 million UK homes.
The onshore wind farm construction is set to begin at its Teesside converter station site this year, with offshore construction expected to start in 2023. Teesside will also be the future home of GE Renewable Energy’s new blade manufacturing plant.
GE’s Grid Solutions will be leading the consortium for the engineering, procurement, construction and installation of the system’s two HVDC converter stations capable of transmitting 1,320 MW of power at 320 kV.
A significant percentage of all the primary HVDC equipment will be manufactured at GE’s Grid Solutions’ Stafford facilities in the West Midlands.
The project will be based on GE Grid‘s latest HVDC technology, which utilizes its second-generation voltage source converter valve, and will also feature the first application of its HVDC control system that uses a digital measurement system fully based on International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) 61850, the international standard defining communication protocols for intelligent electronic devices at electrical substations.
The offshore converter platform will be designed, built, installed and commissioned by Sembcorp Marine. Located at the heart of the wind farm, it will comprise a 17,000-ton topside and a jacket foundation structure piled into the seabed. The onshore converter station will convert the electricity generated by the wind farm to 400 kV AC before it enters the UK national grid.
Source: GE