Heerema Installs Substation at Iberdrola's Baltic Eagle Offshore Wind Farm
OEDigital
February 24, 2023
Heerema Marine Contractors has installed the offshore substation topside on a four-legged steel jacket foundation at Iberdrola's Baltic Eagle offshore wind farm site in Germany, using its Thialf semi-submersible crane vessel.
The offshore substation, built by Iemants-Fabricom, will collect the electricity generated by the Baltic Eagle offshore wind farm turbines and transform the supply voltage before feeding it into the onshore power grid at the Lubmin grid interconnection point.
The installation of the substation topside market the heaviest lifting operation for the Baltic Eagle project, with a total estimated net weight of around 4,200 tonnes.
Iberdrola, based in Spain, will now start the offshore phase to make the substation ready for energization.
This will be followed by the installation of the monopiles to which the wind turbines are attached with transition pieces. The monopiles have been manufactured by the regional company EEW SPC from Rostock.
Once the wind farm is connected to the grid, the electricity generated by its wind turbines will be delivered via inter-array cables to the offshore substation where it will then transformed from 66 kV to 220 kV and transmitted via two high voltage subsea cables across the 90 km distance to the landing point at Lubmin into the 50Hertz transmission grid.
The Baltic Eagle offshore wind farm is located northeast of the Rügen island off the Pomeranian coast in the Baltic Sea and is planned and operated from the local Port of Mukran in Sassnitz. With its 50 wind turbines of 9.5 MW capacity each, it will have a capacity of 476 MW.
The wind turbines will be installed on monopile foundations and the offshore wind farm will cover an area of 40 km2. Following turbine installation, the wind farm is set to be commissioned in 2024.
