Keppel O&M-Aibel consortium clinches 900MW converter station contract

Keppel FELS’s share of the contract is worth about $560m.

A consortium comprising Keppel Offshore & Marine (Keppel O&M)'s wholly-owned subsidiary, Keppel FELS, and Aibel AS, has secured a contract from TenneT Offshore GmbH, a grid operator in the Netherlands and Germany, for the design, engineering, procurement, construction, installation and commissioning of a 900MW offshore High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) converter station and an onshore converter station, an announcement revealed.

Keppel FELS' share of the contract is worth about $560m.

Together with its subcontractor ABB (ASEA Brown Boveri), the consortium will also undertake the installation and startup operations of the offshore and onshore converter stations on a site in Germany.

Scheduled to be completed in 2024, the two converter stations will be part of the DolWin cluster servicing offshore wind farms in the German sector of the North Sea. The offshore converter station will be located approximately 130 km from the onshore converter station, and will provide grid connection for the offshore wind power plants to transmit and supply electricity to approximately a million households in Germany.

According to Chris Ong, CEO of Keppel O&M, this is Keppel O&M's first major project of this scale.

"Together with ABB, the consortium is able to provide a comprehensive and cost effective solution for TenneT. Keppel had previously completed a mobile application barge for an offshore substation in Germany as well as an offshore wind turbine installer,” he said in a statement.

When the 900MW gravity-based offshore converter station is completed, it will be able to receive power from three offshore wind farms and convert High Voltage Alternating Current (HVAC) to HVDC before sending it to the onshore converter station via subsea cables. The onshore converter station will then convert the HVDC back to HVAC and transmit to the grid.

According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, annual installed capacity in the offshore wind sector is projected to increase from 4.5GW in 2018 to 12GW in 2030, resulting in a total cumulative capacity of 115GW in 2030. The global offshore wind installation compound annual growth rate (CAGR) is forecasted at 16% from 2017 to 2030.