The cables at the landfall are connected to the electricity cables on land, from where the electricity produced offshore can feed in at the high-voltage transformer station in Wijk aan Zee.
The NBOS consortium will now connect the end of the second cable to the remaining part offshore. Using two cable-laying vessels, a burial vessel and a burial machine, the consortium will install the remainder of the export cable and bury it at the ‘socket’ that TenneT has built 53 kilometers off the coast of Egmond aan Zee.
RWE and the Dutch transmission system operator (TSO) TenneT signed an offshore grid connection agreement for the new offshore wind farm in September 2023.
The grid connection will be operational by 2026 and RWE’s offshore wind farm, named OranjeWind, is expected to be fully commissioned the following year.
RWE won the right to build and operate the subsidy-free offshore wind farm at the Hollandse Kust West (HKW) VII site in November 2022.
After securing the project site, RWE said the OranjeWind project would incorporate a floating solar farm, a subsea lithium-ion battery, and a LiDAR system to predict power production more accurately. In addition, the developer said it also planned to invest in onshore integration such as electrolysis capacity and e-boilers, to match power generation and offtake.