Located in the German part of the North Sea, DanTysk wind facility has been operating since 2014, with installed 80 wind turbines
Bakker Sliedrecht upgrades offshore power hub for Vattenfall wind farm (Credit: Bakker Sliedrecht.)
Bakker Sliedrecht has upgraded the automation system at the offshore energy substation of Vattenfall’s DanTysk wind farm in the North Sea without any downtime.
The company has upgraded the whole automation system at the substation under full load without failure, which could facilitate continuous transport of sustainable electricity from the DanTysk wind farm to the coast.
Vattenfal operation and maintenance coordinator Stefan Brahm said: “We experienced the corporation with Bakker in a very professional way. On site technician and project manager have been experienced and very skilled in there key competencies.
“The cooperation between our in house expert and the specialists of Bakker Sliedrecht went very smooth. Overall result has been very satisfying. The cutover to the new hardware was realized without any loss of production.”
Bakker Sliedrecht has upgraded wind farm without shutting down the energy supply
Operating since 2014, DanTysk wind facility has been installed with 80 wind turbines, and is located in the German part of the North Sea. The wind farm produces a total output of 288MW, which is adequate to supply up to 400,000 households with sustainable electricity.
The power generated from the wind turbines is transported through 108km of cables to its own energy substation, and the power is converted from 33 kV to 155 kV on the platform, for further transport to a converter station and then to the high-voltage grid of grid operator TenneT.
Bakker Sliedrecht has supplied various components and integrated all systems within the electrical & instrumentation system during the construction of the substation in 2012 and 2013.
In addition, the company has replaced the Ethernet switches in the fibre optic ring for the communication between all systems, redundant SCADA servers and redundant controllers that control the platform.
Bakker Sliedrecht automation engineer Bart van Wijngaarden said: “It can be compared to a large transformer station. The remotely controlled automation system controls and monitors the essential functions on the platform, such as the cooling system and the cooling water pumps. That is of crucial importance on a platform where 288 megawatts of energy is brought together.”
Bakker Sliedrecht project leader Fred Hordijk said: “That is why we have built a whole new network next to the existing one and have started testing it step by step. First we transferred the less critical systems. Only when they worked well we moved on and transferred the next systems and eventually the critical ones. That went well.”