The power and automation group, ABB, has successfully commissioned the subsea cable transmission link connecting one of the largest offshore wind farms in Europe to the Belgian power grid. The project was completed on schedule for the Belgium power company C-Power NV.
The transmission link was completed as part of an expansion of the Thornton Bank wind farm in which, in its first phase, six wind turbines with a total capacity of 30MW were built and temporarily connected to the mainland. The second and third phases involved adding 48 turbines to the facility and connecting the entire project to the national grid thereby enabling its complete capacity of 325MW. The transformer station platform, which collects and transmutes the power to the coast of Belgium, is located 30 kilometers offshore in the North Sea.
ABB was responsible for the system engineering, design, supply and commissioning of the AC subsea cables, the land-based cable systems and the offshore substation and platform. Medium voltage underwater cables connect the wind turbines to the transformer station which boosts the voltage to 150 kilovolts and connects it to the national grid. The electricity is fed into the grid via the Slijkens high-voltage substation located at Bredene, about 3 km inland.
“Integrating renewable energy sources to the grid is a key focus area as Europe strives to balance the need for electricity with minimizing environmental impact” said Brice Koch, head of ABB’s Power Systems division. “The close collaboration with C-Power combined with ABB’s technologies, domain competence and experience were key success factors in the smooth execution of this project.”
The wind farm has a total generating capacity of more than 1,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity per year, equivalent to the annual consumption of around 300,000 Belgian households. It will contribute around 7 percent of Belgium’s targeted renewable energy commitment by 2020 and will help avoid CO2 emissions of around 415,000 tons per year compared to a traditional gas-fuelled power plant.
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