Offshore cabling work kicks off at EnBW’s He Dreiht wind farm in Germany

EnBW is laying the first submarine cable of the internal wind farm cabling that connects all 64 Vestas V236-15.0 MW turbines of the 960 MW He Dreiht offshore wind farm.

Seaway7 has been commissioned with the task. In 2022, EnBW awarded the company an engineering, procurement, installation, and commissioning (EPIC) contract for the inter-array cables for the He Dreiht project.

Two installation vessels are planned to lay and bury a total of around 100 kilometers of cables on the seabed of the North Sea by the summer.

The 66 kV subsea array cables are manufactured by UK-based JDR under a contract signed with Seaway7 in August 2022.

The internal wind farm cabling will later be connected to the converter platform managed by the transmission system operator (TSO) TenneT, which is planned to be installed offshore in the summer.

From there, the generated electricity will be converted from alternating current to direct current and brought ashore using two high-voltage DC export cables.

The He Dreiht project is expected to soon enter the wind turbine installation phase, as all monopile foundations were installed at the project site located around 90 kilometers northwest of the island of Borkum in the summer of 2024.

The 960 MW wind farm will comprise 64 V236-15.0 MW wind turbines provided by Vestas. The project is expected to generate enough electricity to meet the needs of around 1.1 million households.