Export cables for RWE’s Dutch offshore wind farm installed at landfall point

A consortium of Boskalis and Orient Cable (NBOS) has completed the pull-in and burial of the second export cable for TenneT’s Hollandse Kust West Beta offshore grid connection at the landfall location in Velsen-Noord, the Netherlands. The 700 MW grid connection will link the offshore wind farm that RWE will build in the Dutch North Sea to the national grid.

The nearshore part of the second subsea cable has been buried in the seabed off the coast of Velsen-Noord, running for approximately 3.5 kilometers and under the dunes.

The power cable was installed at a depth of eight meters on the beach and in the seabed by the BSSIII burial machine, same as the first nearshore export cable section which was installed in May.

The cables at the landfall are connected to the electricity cables on land, from where the electricity produced offshore can feed in at the high-voltage transformer station in Wijk aan Zee.

The NBOS consortium will now connect the end of the second cable to the remaining part offshore. Using two cable-laying vessels, a burial vessel and a burial machine, the consortium will install the remainder of the export cable and bury it at the ‘socket’ that TenneT has built 53 kilometers off the coast of Egmond aan Zee.

RWE and the Dutch transmission system operator (TSO) TenneT signed an offshore grid connection agreement for the new offshore wind farm in September 2023.

The grid connection will be operational by 2026 and RWE’s offshore wind farm, named OranjeWind, is expected to be fully commissioned the following year.

RWE won the right to build and operate the subsidy-free offshore wind farm at the Hollandse Kust West (HKW) VII site in November 2022.

After securing the project site, RWE said the OranjeWind project would incorporate a floating solar farm, a subsea lithium-ion battery, and a LiDAR system to predict power production more accurately. In addition, the developer said it also planned to invest in onshore integration such as electrolysis capacity and e-boilers, to match power generation and offtake.