Vattenfall and TenneT have signed an agreement for the offshore grid connection for wind farm Hollandse Kust Zuid 3&4.

This follows last year’s agreement between the parties for Hollandse Kust Zuid 1 & 2.

“This is an important milestone, and I’m pleased that the contracts could be signed so quickly – just nine months after winning the bid. We’re looking forward to work with TenneT on Hollandse Kust Zuid 3 & 4. The combined wind farms of Hollandse Kust Zuid will be able to cover the total energy demand of between two and three million households, which makes it a major driving factor behind the transition to renewable energies in the Netherlands.”

Catrin Jung, head Offshore Wind at Vattenfall.

“The development of an offshore grid is well on track. Hollandse Kust Zuid is the second wind farm site to which we will be providing access in the form of two standardised AC connections of around 700 MW each. We are looking forward to working with Vattenfall as we develop HKZ 3 & 4.”

Marco Kuijpers, director Offshore at TenneT.

The Dutch government has assigned TenneT as its offshore grid operator. The Energy Agreement sets out that TenneT will install 1,400 MW of offshore grid connections for the Hollandse Kust Zuid site, and provide for additional flexible transport capacity. 

The plan is for operations on the connection for Hollandse Kust Zuid 1 & 2 to start in 2021. The offshore grid connection for plots 3 & 4 will follow in 2022. All plots will be developed by Vattenfall.

The grid connection for Hollandse Kust Zuid consist of two offshore transformer platforms, each with two 220 kV AC cables per platform. Electricity is transferred to onshore infrastructure via these cables. TenneT is building a new onshore transformer station and is expanding the ‘Maasvlakte 380 kV’ high-voltage station. At this high-voltage station, offshore wind energy is connected to the south ring of the Randstad 380 kV line operated by TenneT. Wind energy is then transferred to power consumers via the national high-voltage network.