Siemens Energy to connect offshore wind farm to New York grid

2021-10-28 Siemens Energy

Siemens Energy has been awarded its first offshore grid connection project in the United States.

In a consortium with Aker Solutions, the company will supply the high-voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission system that will bring green energy from Sunrise Wind, New York’s first utility-scale offshore wind project, to the mainland. It’s the first offshore wind project in the U.S. to use HVDC technology.

The approximately 924 megawatts wind farm is developed by a joint venture between Danish clean energy company Ørsted and US-based energy provider Eversource. Located about 50 kilometers (30 miles) east of Long Island, Sunrise Wind will supply green energy to nearly 600,000 homes in New York State and support the state to meet its 100 percent clean electricity by 2040 goal.

“To date, we have connected the offshore grid to the mainland 21 times, bringing more than 12 gigawatts of wind power to households in Europe. The fact that we are now able to proceed with our very first offshore HVDC grid connection project in the United States makes us proud,” said Tim Holt, member of the Executive Board at Siemens Energy.

“Carbon-neutrality goals will not be met without wide-scale deployment of renewable energy projects like Sunrise Wind. There will be many more wind projects like this in the U.S. and we are happy to do our part to help provide the country with sustainable power.”

Siemens Energy will deliver the HVDC system on a turnkey basis and provide onshore civil work in partnership with local companies. The HVDC system will enable the low-loss transport of the generated green energy from the wind farm to the mainland. It consists of two converter stations: The offshore converter station will collect the 66 kilovolts (kV) alternating current (AC) power generated by the wind turbines through an inter-array cable system and transform it to 320 kV DC for transmission through a 160 kilometers export cable to the onshore converter station, located at Holbrook on Long Island.