Gennaker wind farm: Darss and Zingst offshore substations installed in Baltic Sea
Construction of the Gennaker offshore wind farm off northeastern Germany has reached a first major milestone as the giant vessel Pioneering Spirit installed two substations.
Archive image · Photo: 404458BRZ / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped and resized)
The two offshore substation platforms, Darss and Zingst, have been installed at the Gennaker offshore wind farm in the German Baltic Sea, developer Skyborn Renewables said on Oct. 22. The company called it one of the first major offshore construction milestones. The wind farm is being built about 15 kilometers north of the Fischland-Darss-Zingst peninsula off the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. Munich's municipal utility Stadtwerke München is a project partner.
The plan calls for 63 turbines in the 15-megawatt class with a combined capacity of 976.5 megawatts. According to Skyborn, they are expected to generate about 3.8 terawatt hours of electricity a year, roughly the demand of one million households. The substations step up the power from 66 to 220 kilovolts. It will be brought ashore via the OST-6-1 grid connection system of transmission operator 50Hertz.
Allseas carried out the installation with its vessel Pioneering Spirit, which is 382 meters long and 124 meters wide and can lift up to 60,000 tonnes; according to the statement, it is the world's largest offshore construction vessel. The platforms will now support the next phases of offshore construction. Skyborn did not give a completion date for the wind farm in its statement.