Offshore engineering and construction company McDermott said Tuesday it had secured its largest-ever renewable energy contract from grid operator TenneT for the BorWin6 980MW High-Voltage, Direct Current (HVDC) project, offshore Germany.
The project is for the design, manufacture, installation and commissioning of an HVDC offshore converter platform, located 118 miles (190 kilometers) offshore Germany on the Platform North Sea Cluster 7 in a water depth up to 131 feet (40 meters). Electricity generated from offshore wind farms will be converted into direct current and transported to an onshore converter station located 28 miles (45 kilometers) onshore near Büttel, Germany.
Through a consortium with Global Energy Interconnection Research Institute Co., Ltd. and C-EPRI Electric Power Engineering Co., Ltd. (GEIRI / C-EPRI), McDermott will provide engineering, procurement, construction, installation, and commissioning (EPCIC) services.
"This major EPCIC award elevates our growing energy transition portfolio and signifies our expansion into the thriving offshore wind market, further strengthening our global ambitions in the renewables sector," said Samik Mukherjee, McDermott's Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer.
"Our integrated EPCIC delivery model, combined with nearly a century of experience executing some of the most challenging offshore projects in the world, make us ideally suited to support TenneT on this important offshore grid connection project," said Tareq Kawash, McDermott's Senior Vice President, Europe, Middle East, Africa. "Additionally, our HVDC Center of Excellence in The Hague is strategically positioned to lead our execution delivery in the European market."
On the HVDC offshore platform, McDermott's scope includes the engineering, procurement, fabrication, transport and installation, and commissioning of the topside module and jacket. On the onshore converter station, McDermott's scope includes the engineering, procurement, construction and commissioning.
GEIRI / C-EPRI's scope includes the engineering, manufacture, supply, installation supervision and commissioning of the HVDC system for the onshore and offshore converter stations.
The engineering and project management will be executed from McDermott's HVDC center of excellence in The Hague with support from its Chennai and Gurgaon offices. The fabrication of the topside is planned to be executed by the Qingdao McDermott Wuchuan (QMW) Fabrication Facility in Qingdao, China, and the jacket from McDermott's Batam fabrication yard in Indonesia. McDermott did not share the financial details.
"With regard to the high expansion targets for offshore wind energy in the North Sea, we are pleased that an international consortium was able to prevail in our tendering procedure. Even though this consortium is new to us, it has a lot of experience in the offshore as well as the high-voltage direct current transmission (HVDC) business," said Tim Meyerjürgens, COO of TenneT. "As a transmission system operator, we will need many reliable partners in the coming years to enable the offshore expansion at the desired pace and with the targeted connection capacities. In terms of speeding up the process, we have taken the lead with this project: It was initially planned with a connection capacity of 930 megawatts. In the technical planning, we were able to increase the capacity by 50 megawatts. The project was recently confirmed in the latest grid development plan."
The direct connection principle is also used for BorWin6, which means that TenneT connects the wind turbines directly to TenneT's offshore platform BorWin kappa via 66-kilovolt three-phase cables. This eliminates the need for transformer stations that were previously necessary in each and every wind farm. In addition, 155-kilovolt three-phase cables are not required to connect TenneT's offshore platform with that of the wind farm. Economically speaking, this innovative technology leads to enormous cost savings, Tennet said.
Tim Meyerjürgens said: "With the award of BorWin6, we are continuing the ongoing cost reduction in the construction of offshore grid connection systems. We are also applying the smart platform concept by installing particularly low-maintenance technology on the offshore platform. This enables us to reduce the maintenance effort and ultimately the operating costs of the asset.”