Siemens hands over first North Sea grid connection to TenneT

Siemens has handed over the first North Sea grid connection, BorWin2, to its customer TenneT. The German-Dutch transmission grid operator has accepted the project following successful completion of test runs by Siemens.

The grid connection BorWin2 is therefore now in commercial operation. BorWin2 is with an overall transmission capacity of 800 megawatts (MW) the world's largest direct-current grid connection. Its transmission capacity is enough to supply around one million German households with power.

The next three grid connections, Sylwin1, HelWin1 and HelWin2, are nearly completed and are scheduled to take up commercial operation in the first half of 2015.

BorWin3, the fifth grid connection, which was contracted in spring 2014, is slated to go on-line in 2019. About five million households will be supplied with electricity generated from wind power via this five links alone. Thanks to the use of high-voltage direct-current (HVDC) transmission technology, the losses over those links are less than four percent.