ABB Installs World’s Most Powerful Substation

ABB has installed DolWin beta, the world’s most powerful offshore converter station in the North Sea.

The 320-kilovolt converter station, housed on an offshore platform, has a 916 megawatts (MW) power transmission capacity, making it the world’s most powerful installation of its kind, enough to power more than 1,000,000 households with clean energy.

The offshore converter station is part of the DolWin2 project which will be operated by transmission system operator TenneT and will connect offshore wind farms in the North Sea’s DolWin cluster, currently the largest offshore wind farm cluster worldwide, with the German grid.

“After the successful handover of the DolWin1 link in July, this is another key milestone in the execution of our offshore wind projects,” said ABB CEO Ulrich Spiesshofer. “It is a further example of our focus on relentless execution and of the ongoing progress in the Power Systems division’s Step Change program.”

DolWin2 is part of Germany’s energy transition roadmap, called “Energiewende”, which foresees the generation of more than 6.5 gigawatts (GW) from offshore wind by 2020 and 15 GW by 2030. The DolWin1 grid connection, which ABB commissioned and handed over to transmission system operator TenneT at the end of July 2015, also contributes to this goal.

ABB was awarded the turnkey responsibility for the design, engineering, supply and installation of the offshore wind connection by TenneT. The project scope includes the offshore converter station, the sea and land cable systems, and the onshore converter station.