At the former Lenin shipyard in polish Gdansk the steel construction for another offshore substation in the Baltic Sea has started.
The platform was ordered by wind farm operator Parkwind in coordination with 50Hertz. On this platform, the electricity generated by the Arcadis Ost 1 wind farm located east of Rügen island, will be collected and transformed to the 220 kV level.
From there, the electricity will flow through the Ostwind 2 submarine cables. After 95 kilometers, these reach the Lubmin substation at the Greifswald Bodden, where the electricity is integrated into 50Hertz’s extra high voltage grid. The contractor for the platform is a specialist company Bladt Industries from Denmark.
The shipyard in Gdansk became world-famous in the 1980s because the independent trade union So-lidarnosc was founded there and this was the beginning of the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe.
The most important part of the platform is the bare steel structure: the substation building itself, the so-called topside. A total of almost 1,000 tonnes of prime steel was cut, sanded, and partial-ly installed at the Danzig shipyard.
The steel construction is expected to last until the first half of 2021. A seaworthy coating will then be applied to the still empty steel structure to effectively protect it against corrosion.
After the steel construction has been completed, the topside will be shipped across the Baltic Sea to Aalborg in Denmark on a pontoon. At the local Bladt shipyard, the empty substation structure will then be filled with eletrotechnical installations: transformers, gas-isolated switchgear and other operating facilities. At its offshore destination to the east of Rügen island, the platform will be anchored onto a single pile that has been driven into the seabed. The topside and foundation are then connected to each other.
According to the current planning, the offshore substation for the Arcadis Ost 1 wind farm, with a planned capacity of 247 megawatts, should be installed in 2022, followed by work for the grid connection.
50Hertz is planning three submarine cable systems at the 220 kV alternating current level with a total capacity of 750 MW to connect Arcadis Ost 1 and the neighboured wind farm Baltic Eagle with the german extra high voltage grid. Currently, 50Hertz co-owners four offshore substations in the Baltic Sea, Elia in Belgian operates one offshore substation in the North Sea.
