Transmission deals signed after FID on 1.1GW Polish offshore
Transmission deals signed after FID on 1.1GW Polish offshore | Windpower Monthly
Developed in partnership with Canada’s Northland Power, the first wind farm in the Polish Baltic Sea will be located 23 kilometres off the coastline and will feature 76 wind turbines, each with a power rating of 15MW. The project is scheduled to be fully operational by 2026.
Baltic Operator, a subsidiary of Grupa Przemysłowa Baltic, will manufacture two offshore substations for the project. Production of the offshore substations is due to start this month at Grupa Przemysłowa Baltic’s production facilities in Gdansk and Gdynia.
A consortium comprising Tele-Fonika Kable and JDR Cable Systems – both part of TFK Group – and partners NKT and Deme Offshore will design, manufacture and install 340 kilometres of land and subsea cables.
TFK will manufacture and install 230kV land power cables and cores for inter-array cables at its manufacturing facility in Bydgoszcz. As a consortium partner, NKT will develop the offshore export cables that will deliver power from the offshore substations to the shore.
At its Hartlepool facility in the UK, JDR will design and manufacture 66kV inter-array cables that will be used to connect the 76 turbines to the offshore substation. Deme Offshore will be responsible for the transport and installation of all subsea cables.
The manufacture and delivery of all cables will be completed by the end of 2025.
Related Knowledge Center: Offshore wind energy
Over the next decade, U.S. offshore wind power is expected to grow from a single 30-megawatt wind farm off Rhode Island to more than 2,000 MW of capacity along the Atlantic Seaboard. There are contracts for wind power off the coasts of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Maryland, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Virginia.
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory has estimated the United States has over 4,000 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind potential, enough to power the country four times over.
The growth in part being spurred by state solicitations, including in New York, where then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) set a commitment of 9,000 MW of offshore wind by 2035, and in Connecticut, where in June 2021, Gov. Ned Lamont (D) signed legislation authorizing the construction of 2,000 MW of offshore wind by 2030.
The offshore development is also being driven by an investment tax credit set to end in December 2019 and is equal to 12 percent of expenditures. U.S. Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Tom Carper (D-Del.) have introduced a bill to extend the tax credit for up to eight years.
The Interior Department has held eight competitive lease sales that resulted in 15 offshore wind leases over 1.7 million acres that has the potential for 21 GW of capacity. In February 2022, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management completed a bidding process that realized $4.37 billion for 488,000 acres across six lease areas in federal waters off New York and New Jersey.
Projects have also been proposed off the Southeast coast, off California and Hawaii, and for the Great Lakes.