ABB Bags Butendiek OWF - SylWin Alpha Subsea Cabling

ABB has won an order from TenneT to design, engineer, supply and install an Alternating Current (AC) power transmission cable system that will connect Butendiek, an offshore wind farm in the German North Sea, to the HVDC converter platform SylWin alpha.

The cable will link the AC platform of the Butendiek offshore wind farm to the HVDC converter platform SylWin alpha. The Butendiek wind farm is situated around 30 kilometers (km) off the island of Sylt. The cable system to be supplied is a 3-core 155 kilovolt (kV) AC submarine cable, approx. 38 km long. It is scheduled to be installed and commissioned in 2015. The high voltage cable originally destined for this project was lost in an incident in the Mediterranean Sea in July and ABB was requested to step in and help to support the project schedule.

The cable system will have a capacity to transmit 144 megawatts (MW) of wind power, enough to meet the electricity needs of approximately 150.000 German households. The use of clean, renewable wind energy as an alternate source is equivalent to the abatement of almost 750,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year that could have resulted from fossil fueled generation.

“Germany is among the world’s leading proponents of renewable energy and continues to push for lowering environmental impact”, said Claudio Facchin, Head of ABB’s Power Systems business. “We have a vast array of technologies and considerable experience in this domain and are pleased to support TenneT with this fast track project.”

Butendiek is the sixth offshore wind connection project in Germany awarded to ABB by TenneT. ABB is presently executing the Sandbank AC cable link, which also connects an offshore wind farm to the SylWin alpha HVDC converter platform.