The Baltic Power offshore wind farm is planned to be developed in the Baltic Sea, around 23km off the coast of Polish shoreline. Baltic Power, a joint venture between PKN ORLEN and Northland Power, will develop, operate and maintain the project.

The offshore wind farm will have a capacity of up to 1,200MW (1.2GW).

In March 2021, Northland Power acquired a 49% interest in Baltic Power offshore wind project. PKN ORLEN retained the remaining 51% stake.

The construction of the project is slated to commence in 2024 with commissioning expected in 2026. The budget of the wind farm is more than PLN10bn ($2.28bn).

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Location and Site details

The Baltic Power Offshore Wind Farm will be located in the Polish Exclusive Economic Zone in the Baltic Sea. The site is around 23km to the north of the shoreline, off the coast of Choczewo and Łeba in Poland.

The offshore location licence encompasses a total area of nearly 131km2. Around 100km2 of buildable area is available for installing wind farm components.

The offshore power export cable route will pass through the Polish Exclusive Economic Zone, Baltic Territorial Sea and Internal Waters.

The onshore infrastructure will be located in Choczewo Commune, Starosty of Wejherowo with power cables located within the Choczewo Forest.

Development

After the completion of a detailed research that took more than 17 months, PKN ORLEN submitted the application for environmental clearance for the farm site to the Regional Directorate for Environmental Protection in Gdańsk in July 2020.

In September 2020, the company initiated a design phase for the construction of an offshore wind farm project.

The onshore geological surveys for the wind farm began in November 2020. In June 2021, the main phase of geotechnical surveys of the bottom of the Baltic Sea at the site and along the connection route commenced.

A year after, in June 2022, Baltic Power became the first wind farm developer on the Polish Baltic Sea to have completed a geotechnical survey.

The Baltic Sea wind farm project has already secured location permit and has signed grid connection agreement.

Baltic Power offshore wind farm infrastructure

The offshore wind farm will feature 76 Vestas turbines, each with a power generating capacity of 15MW. The height of the turbines will be more than 200m.

The turbine foundations, made of steel piles, will weigh up to 2.4 thousand tonnes. It will have a height of 120m and will be driven into the seabed up to 50m by specialised vessels.

The offshore wind farm will have two substations, which via an internal cable network will receive the energy produced by the wind turbines.

Each offshore substation will feature a 2.5 thousand-tonne steel structure installed on foundations. The substations will have a height of about 20m above the sea level.

The renewable energy generated by the wind farm will be transported to the onshore substation via export cables.

Overall, the project will have approximately 355km of cables, including 130km of inter-array cables transmitting power from the turbines and delivering it to offshore substations.

The remaining cables will be used to lay four export links to transport electricity through a 39km long connection route connecting the offshore infrastructure to the onshore substation in Choczewo.

Baltic Power has secured a lease contract for a 1.1ha land at the Łeba seaport to support offshore wind farm operations and maintenance.

Power evacuation

After receiving power generated by the Baltic Power offshore wind farm, the onshore substation will feed the electricity into the Polish transmission system.

In January 2021, Baltic Power signed a grid connection agreement in this regard with Polskie Sieci Elektroenergetyczne (PSE), a state-owned power transmission system operator in Poland.

In June 2021, Poland’s Energy Regulatory Office awarded a contract for difference (CfD) for the wind project. Under the 25-year contract, the project will be compensated for the potential difference between the market price of electricity and the strike price set in the CfD.

Contractors Involved

Offshore Design Engineering (ODE) secured the contract to undertake the initial technical design and building permit design for the Baltic Power offshore wind farm. This included supporting Baltic Power with technical designs of the offshore site, turbines layout, energy production calculations, budget and schedule of the project and support analysis.

JBO was engaged by Baltic Power for the design of the wind turbine foundations, while ENPROM worked to prepare a route for a cable connection.

In September 2022, Baltic Power selected Vestas as the preferred wind turbine supplier for the 1.2GW Baltic Power Offshore Wind Project. Under the agreement, Vestas will provide 76 V236-15.0 MW turbines for the offshore wind farm.

The wind turbines will have a swept area of more than 43,000m2, supporting wind energy production to up to 80 GWh/year. This is enough to power around 20,000 European households.

In July 2022, Denmark’s Cadeler won a reservation contract to transport and install the wind turbines for the Baltic Power offshore wind farm.

In September 2022, Steelwind Nordenham secured the contract to supply the monopile foundations for all infrastructure elements. Belgian fabrication company Smulders and Haizea Bilbao will fabricate and supply more than 70 transition pieces for the Baltic Power offshore wind farm.

In the same month, Baltic Power picked Van Oord for the transportation and installation of more than 70 foundations, while a consortium of Bladt Industries and Semco Maritime was selected for the supply of two offshore substations.

NKT will be responsible for the design and manufacturing of the offshore export cables.

The inter-array cables and the onshore section of the export cables will be supplied by TELE-FONIKA Kable together with JDR Cable Systems. TELE-FONIKA Kable will also transport and install the cables on the onshore section, while DEME will handle the transport and installation of all offshore cables offshore.

Polish company ERBUD received a contract in February 2023 to build the wind farm service base.