Offshore cables for Gode Wind 1 and 2: large order awarded to Lower Saxony-based Nexans

In the presence of Lower Saxony's State Premier Stephan Weil, DONG Energy and Nexans Deutschland on Monday (today) signed a supplementary contract for the delivery and installation of medium-voltage cables for the German offshore wind farms Gode Wind 1 and 2. This new agreement is part of an outline contract for the delivery of up to 900 km of offshore cables for internal farm cabling. The order for Gode Wind includes 140 km of 34-kV offshore cables, which link the individual wind turbines to each other and connect them to the offshore transformer platform. The construction of the Gode Wind 1 and 2 wind farms off the Lower Saxony coast will start in spring 2015 as soon as the Borkum Riffgrund 1 offshore wind farm, which is currently under construction, has been completed. Gode Wind 1 and 2 will have a total capacity of 582 MW, enough green energy to power around 600,000 German homes. The total investment for both projects is around EUR 2.2 billion.

Trine Borum Bojsen, DONG Energy's managing director for the German wind sector: “For us, Germany is a core market and our German projects off the Lower Saxony coast are making a major contribution to achieving our goal of expanding Germany's offshore capacity to 6.5 gigawatts by 2020. The order for Nexans shows that the German supplier industry already occupies a key position in the international offshore business, as the outline contract with Nexans not only includes the supply of our German projects Borkum Riffgrund 1 and Gode Wind, but also the supply of our UK wind farms Westermost Rough and West of Duddon Sands.”

At the signing of the contract, Christof Barklage – CEO of Nexans Deutschland – stressed the following: “The outline contract with DONG Energy is extremely significant for the Nexans site in Hanover, both in terms of the capacity utilisation of our plant and the continued development and production of offshore cable materials.” Dr Dirk Steinbrink, Executive Vice President of High Voltage & Underwater Cables, added: “We are delighted that DONG Energy values the quality and our more than 40 years of experience with offshore cables and that we, as supplier for these offshore projects, can do our bit to promote the energy turnaround.”

Gode Wind 1 (330 MW) and 2 (252 MW) comprise 97 6 MW Siemens wind turbines with a rotor diameter of 154 metres.
For both projects, DONG Energy has an unconditional network connection commitment from transmission network operator TenneT.
Gode Wind 1 and 2 lie around 45 km from the coast, just off the islands of Norderney and Juist. Construction is scheduled to begin as soon as Borkum Riffgrund 1 is complete. When Gode Wind 1 and 2 are complete, DONG Energy will have expanded its offshore wind capacity to 3.5 GW. DONG Energy's goal is to expand total offshore capacity to 6.5 GW by 2020.

Construction of the Gode wind projects will begin in the first half of 2015, with commissioning scheduled to take place the following year.