World's Largest Wind Farm Connects to Grid

The volume of the order for the grid connection is approximately €84 million.

With a capacity of 500 megawatts (MW), the Greater Gabbard project will be the world’s largest offshore wind farm.

Siemens will also supply 140 wind turbines for this project, which will be constructed 25 km off the coast of Suffolk in the UK.

The wind farm will be commissioned in two phases, with the entire construction scheduled to be completed in 2011. The Greater Gabbard project is owned by Airtricity, the renewables arm of Scottish and Southern Energy. The project was jointly developed by Airtricity and Fluor, where Fluor is the balance of plant contractor.

"Siemens Energy has a unique wind power portfolio. Not only do we manufacture and supply high-tech wind turbines, we also efficiently connect wind farms to the grid. This includes carrying out the necessary preliminary network studies," said Udo Niehage, CEO of the Power Transmission Division of the Siemens Energy Sector.

As part of the grid connection for the Greater Gabbard offshore wind farm, Siemens is constructing two substation platforms to be positioned at sea. The substation platforms concentrate the energy generated by the wind farms.

Subsea cables will transport the power to the feed-in point, which will be located at the coast. The energy efficient connection of offshore wind farms to the electrical power grid is an important feature of Siemens’ environmental portfolio.

In 2007, revenue from the products and solutions of Siemens' environmental portfolio was nearly €17 billion. The environmental portfolio is growing 10 percent annually; the revenue target for 2011 is €25 billion. "Siemens is trusted as the leading onshore substation design and build provider. We won this project by demonstrating our transferable skills for offshore network analysis, design, construction and commissioning. Together with our expertise in wind turbine manufacture, this means our knowledge and depth of experience is unrivalled," said John Willcock, Director of Major Projects for Siemens Transmission and Distribution Ltd.

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