Powerful transfer

The world’s most isolated marine-based wind farm was propelled forward thanks to Semcon’s system and management.

ABB’s Power Systems HVDC unit provides power transfer for high voltage direct current between the world’s most isolated marine-based wind farm, BARD Offshore 1 and the mainland. BARD Offshore 1 consists of 80 wind turbines each producing 5 MW of energy situated 125 km off the German coast. The major challenge is transferring the energy from the wind farm to the German national grid 75 km away on the mainland.

Semcon was brought in to construct the control, steering and assistance systems and installation management on site for the land station. The supply was based on ABB’s HVDC concept and consists of a converter station that converts AC-DC on a platform at sea, cable and a land-based converter station. The project was run under extreme time constraints as many new technical challenges arose due to specific demands linked to the offshore industry and wind farms.

On 6 June 2009, the 3,300 tone top section containing the converter station was lifted to its feet. Following intense work throughout the summer the land-based section of the plant was electrified in August and commissioning could start.

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