FRANKFURT – March 8, 2016 - GE (NYSE: GE) and transmission system operator TenneT have made another key project progress with the deployment and installation of two 685 MVA power transformers at the Dörpen West converter station for the DolWin3 High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) project. The contract, awarded in February 2013 is on track to be completed in 2017.
DolWin3 is the third grid connection of the DolWin wind farm cluster, located in the south western region of the North Sea. This offshore grid connection project will feed up to 900 MW of wind energy to the German grid. Its completion will allow the delivery of clean energy to approximately one million German households.
The 685 MVA power transformers have been specially designed, manufactured and tested in GE's Mönchengladbach unit in Germany to meet the specific requirements of the DolWin3 project. Each transformer is equipped with a tap changer. This makes it possible for individual power flows to be adjusted so that the associated voltage fluctuations in the mains can be levelled out. They are also resistant to overloading, allowing energy generated from the wind farms to be permanently transmitted even in the case of outage of one power transformer. The Dörpen converter station inverts the energy transmitted from the offshore converter station DolWin gamma, feeding it directly into the extra-high voltage network of the transmission system operator, TenneT.
Gerhard Seyrling, Central Europe Region General Manager at Grid Solutions, a division of GE Energy Connections said: “We are very pleased with the progress of the DolWin3 HVDC project. We are on track with the project, from the construction of the onshore and offshore converter stations to the assembly of the connecting cables. The installation at Dörpen supports Germany in meeting its clean energy targets”.
