The 900 MW Borkum Riffgrund 3 offshore wind farm in Germany will be commissioned in the first quarter of 2026 instead of the initially planned fourth quarter of 2025 due to a delay in the grid connection construction. The cause of the grid connection delay can be traced back to 2020/2021 and the challenges in the supply chain during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to information that Borkum Riffgrund 3 developer, Ørsted, shared in its third-quarter 2024 report, the installation of the grid connection “has been delayed by the German TSO” so the expected commercial operation date (COD) of the offshore wind farm was moved from Q4 2025 to Q1 2026.
Ørsted also says the company is being compensated for the postponement.
Borkum Riffgrund 3 will be linked to the DolWin5 offshore grid connection system which TenneT is building in the North Sea.
“In summer 2024, TenneT announced that the completion of the DolWin5 grid connection is expected to be delayed until 15 December 2025. DolWin epsilon is expected to be transported to the North Sea and installed there in the second quarter of 2025, after which the final connection work and tests for commissioning can take place, so that the first feed-in will be possible from autumn 2025 at the earliest”, a TenneT spokesperson said in an email statement to offshoreWIND.biz.
According to the spokesperson, the COVID-19 pandemic impacted steel and welding work on the DolWin epsilon offshore platform in Singapore, which started at the end of 2020 and saw significant disruptions as of the summer of 2021 as foreign skilled workers were unable to enter Singapore at all or were able to work only to a very limited extent.
Despite personnel and organisational measures, this affected the planned completion and installation timeline for the offshore platform, according to the spokesperson.
The DolWin epsilon offshore converter platform was completed last year and left Seatrium’s shipyard in Singapore in October 2023.
The 900 MW DolWin5 offshore grid connection project uses extra-high voltage direct current transmission technology. The three-phase alternating current (AC) generated by the offshore wind farm is converted into direct current (DC) at DolWin epsilon and transported south to Hamswehrum near the river Ems in East Frisia via a 100-kilometre-long subsea cable.
From Hamswehrum, a 30-kilometre-long onshore cable leads to the converter station in Emden/East where the DC is converted back into three-phase AC and fed into the extra-high voltage grid on land.
As for Borkum Riffgrund 3, offshore work is progressing on schedule, according to Ørsted, with all foundations and 85 per cent of the wind turbines installed. The developer expects the offshore installation work to be completed before the end of this year.
Borkum Riffgrund 3 is being built simultaneously with the 253 MW Gode Wind 3, which already delivered its first power in May this year.
At Gode Wind 3, the construction has been completed and the final wind turbines are now undergoing the 240-hour test before the wind farm is fully commissioned.
NOTE: The original article was updated on 6 December with information about the cause of the grid connection delay received from TenneT.