Location: Germany
Category: Industrial plants
In Germany plans are being made for offshore wind farms in the North and Baltic seas. By the end of 2011 the Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency passed approval for a total of 28 wind farms comprising 2,027 turbines. As virtually all German projects are in locations far from the coast, four large North Sea clusters were formed: DolWin, BorWin, HelWin and SylWin. For cost reasons, this requires connecting several wind farms by means of a central converter station. Connecting projects in locations far from the coast are only technically possible by using lowloss high-voltage direct current transmission (HVDC) because transmission with an alternating current means that the amount of electricity brought back to land is not economically viable. Two of our engineers have been responsible for the commissioning of the 155 kV bus bar protection, the line protection, the voltage protection and the line differential protection. The protection system consists of protection devices from different manufacturers, including ABB REB500, Schneider Electric Micom P437, Micom P132 and Siemens 7SD52, 7SS52, 7SS523
