Arkona Offshore Transformer Completed
All bags for the move from the French Atlantic coast to the German Baltic Sea are packed: the STX France shipyard has now completed the transformer station of the offshore windfarm Arkona in time. The project partners E.ON, Statoil and 50Hertz recognised this progress in St. Nazaire together with STX France in the form of a ship blessing ceremony with international guests.
With a weight of more than 5,000t and a height of more than 100m from sea ground, the transformer station will form the heart of the Arkona offshore windfarm, which E.ON and the Norwegian energy company Statoil are building off the coast of Rügen. The German-Norwegian-French joint production will be installed at a depth of 30m. The construction of the substation required 500,000 working hours. Two high-sea tugs will transport the foundation and platform to Germany from mid-March. Depending on the weather, the trip will take two weeks.
The joint venture of E.ON and Statoil is the owner of the platform and will operate the windfarm after completion. The Arkona windfarm and the transmission system operator 50Hertz will jointly use the platform: the renewable energy from the individual wind turbines is bundled there and transported by sea cable to the mainland. Holger Matthiesen, Director of the Arkona Project: “With completing the topside within time and budget we reached an important milestone for the entire project. The cooperation of several European companies can be seen as a symbol of how the development of renewable energy can be achieved with combined forces.”
Henrich Quick, Head of Offshore Projects at 50Hertz: “Today we are celebrating an important milestone in a project that we started in 2013 in partnership with our colleagues from E. ON: delivery of the Arkona offshore transformer station. We are making good progress on our grid connection project Ostwind 1. We are confident that we will implement the grid connection on time for commissioning in 2019. I am convinced that the OSS Arkona platform model has great potential for defining a future standard.”
Frederic Grizaud, Vice President Marine Energy at STX France: “For STX France and our partners, this sail away is another demonstration of the capacity of our teams to deliver complex integrated projects on time and to our customer’s satisfaction, with the highest quality standard. Being able to deliver on time the critical component of a wind farm is a strong asset in the Offshore wind market which is highly competitive and moving fast.”
The Arkona project is located 35km northeast of the island of Rügen. The windfarm will have a capacity of 385MW and is expected to supply around 400,000 households with renewable energy by 2019. The investment volume amounts to EUR 1.2 billion. Compared to conventionally generated electricity, Arkona saves up to 1.2 million tons of CO2 per year. 60 turbines of the 6MW class from Siemens will be installed. They are based on monopile foundations at water depths of 23 to 37m.