DONG Energy and Nexans Deutschland yesterday signed a supplementary contract for the delivery and installation of medium-voltage cables for the German offshore wind farms Gode Wind 1 and 2.
This new agreement is part of an outline contract for the delivery of up to 900 km of offshore cables for internal farm cabling. The order for Gode Wind includes 140 km of 34-kV offshore cables, which link the individual wind turbines to each other and connect them to the offshore transformer platform.
At the signing of the contract, Christof Barklage, CEO of Nexans Deutschland, stressed the following: “The outline contract with DONG Energy is extremely significant for the Nexans site in Hanover, both in terms of the capacity utilisation of our plant and the continued development and production of offshore cable materials.”
Trine Borum Bojsen, DONG Energy’s managing director for the German wind sector said: “For us, Germany is a core market and our German projects off the Lower Saxony coast are making a major contribution to achieving our goal of expanding Germany’s offshore capacity to 6.5 gigawatts by 2020. The order for Nexans shows that the German supplier industry already occupies a key position in the international offshore business, as the outline contract with Nexans not only includes the supply of our German projects Borkum Riffgrund 1 and Gode Wind, but also the supply of our UK wind farms Westermost Rough and West of Duddon Sands.”
Lower Saxony’s State Premier Stephan Weil was delighted with the fact that it was a Lower Saxony-based company that won this Europe-wide invitation to tender. Moreover, he sees the contract signing as another important step towards implementing the Gode Wind 1 and 2 projects . “Offshore wind energy is an essential pillar of the energy turnaround and, thanks to the high number of wind hours, makes a key contribution to the climate-friendly supply security of the future. The Gode Wind 1 and 2 wind farms are significant milestones on the path towards this goal,” Mr. Weil said.
The construction of the Gode Wind 1 and 2 wind farms off the Lower Saxony coast will start in spring 2015 as soon as the Borkum Riffgrund 1 offshore wind farm, which is currently under construction, has been completed. Gode Wind 1 and 2 will have a total capacity of 582 MW, enough green energy to power around 600,000 German homes. The total investment for both projects is around EUR 2.2 billion.
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Press release, February 4, 2014; Image: Nexans