2 August, 2011

Prysmian has been awarded a new major contract worth in excess of € 200 million by the Dutch-German grid operator TenneT for the connection project HelWin2, linking offshore wind farms in the North Sea to mainland Germany.

Prysmian will provide complete supply, installation and commissioning of the submarine and land cable connections as part of a larger contract worth approximately € 600 M, awarded to the consortium of Prysmian and Siemens Energy. Siemens will deliver the Voltage Sourced Converter (VSC) system, with a rating of 690 MW. The turnkey connection will link the offshore wind park Amrum Bank West in the ‘HelWin’ Cluster zone located about 55 km offshore in the North Sea to the mainland with the purpose of transmitting power from renewable source into the German Grid.

The HelWin2 project will use extruded HVDC cable technology from Prysmian together with Siemens HVDC Plus® converter technology at the offshore platform and onshore stations. The approximately 130 km HVDC connection to be supplied by Prysmian’s European HV factories shall comprise of subsea and land cable types at a voltage of ± 320 kV DC along an 85 km sea route plus a 45 km land route to the land converter station in Büttel, north-west of Hamburg. Extruded 155 kV HVAC submarine cable connections shall complete the link from the offshore wind park transformer to the offshore converter platform. The cables and accessories will be manufactured in the period 2012-2014 at Prysmian’s European HV factories. Commissioning and commencement of commercial operation of the HVDC link is planned for 2015.