Italy-headquartered Prysmian has finalized three contracts worth in aggregate around €5 billion with the transmission system operator (TSO) Amprion for BalWin1 and BalWin2 offshore grid connection systems and the DC34 underground cable project in Germany.
According to Prysmian, this package deal is the largest in value and in kilometers of cable ever awarded to the company.
The contract includes in total approximately 4,400 kilometers of ±525 kV HVDC cables and dedicated metallic return (DMR) cables, of which around 3,400 are land cables and 1,000 kilometers are submarine cables.
The contracts follow the selection of Prysmian as the preferred bidder in August 2023.
“ We have secured the necessary cable resources for three important energy transition projects. Contracts like the ones with Prysmian are essential in order to achieve our offshore expansion targets. For us, this is a major step towards project success,” said Dr Hendrik Neumann, CTO of Amprion.
The three projects are part of Germany’s overall plan to install 70 GW of offshore wind by 2045 and will support the transmission of the energy generated in the North Sea to consumers in the Western and Southern regions of the country, according to Prysmian.
BalWin1 and BalWin2 each will transmit up to 2 GW of energy from the future offshore wind farms to be located in the German North Sea BalWin cluster to the grid connection points in Wehrendorf (Lower Saxony) and Westerkappeln (North Rhine-Westphalia).
BalWin1 offshore grid connection is planned to be put into operation as early as 2029 and BalWin2 as early as 2030.
In addition, DC34, as part of the Rhein-Main-Link, will connect the substation in Lower Saxony to a second substation in the federal state of Hesse to transmit up to 2 GW of wind energy to consumers in the Rhine-Main metropolitan area.