RWE and TotalEnergies have entered into a partnership agreement to jointly deliver the OranjeWind offshore wind project in the Netherlands, with TotalEnergies buying half of RWE’s equity stake to deliver the be the first ‘system integration’ project in the Dutch market.
RWE and TotalEnergies have also taken the investment decision to build the OranjeWind offshore wind farm, which will have an installed capacity of 795 MW.
OranjeWind is located in the North Sea, approximately 53 kilometres from IJmuiden on the Dutch coast, in the province of Noord-Holland.
RWE will lead the development, construction and operation of the wind farm on behalf of the joint venture. Offshore construction is scheduled to start in 2026, with full commissioning expected in early 2028.
With an expected annual generation of around 3 TWh, OranjeWind will produce enough green electricity to supply the equivalent of more than one million Dutch households.
The OranjeWind project will be the first system integration project in the Dutch market. It aims to perfectly match intermittent wind power generation with flexible energy demand and will thus contribute to grid stability.
To this end, each partner will deliver their allocated part of system integration solutions, including electrolysers, smart charging solutions for electric vehicles, e-boilers for heating and battery storage.
Part of the OranjeWind project is also to accelerate the commercial application of new offshore technologies. To allow more efficient use of ocean space, an offshore demonstration floating solar farm is currently being developed by RWE in collaboration with SolarDuck, a Dutch-Norwegian company that specializes in offshore floating solar solutions.
Furthermore, the partners are looking at using scanning LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging system), a technology that can accurately measure wind at long ranges.
In addition, the OranjeWind project is also to demonstrate a seabed battery system developed in cooperation with Verlume and a pumped hydro-storage system in collaboration with Ocean Grazer.
For the OranjeWind offshore wind farm, a turbine supply agreement was signed with Vestas for 53 of its 15 MW turbines (V236) and a foundation supply agreement was made with SiF for 53 monopiles.
The inter-array cables will be supplied by TKF. Jan De Nul was contracted to transport and install the foundations and wind turbines, using its floating heavy lift vessel Les Alizés and its jack-up installation vessel Voltaire.
The offshore grid connection will be implemented by the network operator TenneT. For this purpose, the inter-array cables will be connected to the TenneT-owned offshore substation from where the export cables will run to the high-voltage onshore substation in Wijk aan Zee.
“In TotalEnergies I am delighted to have a strong partner at our side with whom we can realise our first offshore wind project in the Netherlands and at the same time unlock the full system integration of OranjeWind. Together, we will provide a blueprint for the Dutch energy system of the future, designed to tackle the challenges of intermittent wind generation and flexible energy demand,” said Sven Utermöhlen, CEO RWE Offshore Wind.
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