Nordic Yards Lays Dock for Offshore Converter Platform

Nordic Yards has performed the dock-laying of a steel element of the offshore converter platform DolWin gamma took place on January 30 in Warnemünde. The placing of a 200-metric-ton section marked another milestone in the production of the High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) platform, the builder said.

As general contractor, Alstom placed an order with Nordic Yards in February 2013 for the construction of the offshore platform for the DolWin3 project run by the Dutch transmission system operator TenneT. The offshore platform DolWin gamma is the fourth platform manufactured by Nordic Yards. The construction started in October 2014. Due for installation in 2017, the converter platform will be the core of the grid connection project DolWin3 in the southwestern part of the German North Sea: it will convert 900 MW of electricity from AC to DC and transmit it to the Dörpen onshore converter station via sea and land cable over a distance of 162 km. In Dörpen, the power will be converted back to AC, fed into TenneT´s onshore transmission grid and supplied to the end users.

For the first time, the complete basic and detailed design as well as the transport and the installation in the North Sea belong to the scope of delivery of Nordic Yards, in addition to the construction of the platform.

The platform´s topside will be manufactured in Warnemünde, its foundation is produced in split-construction at the sites in Wismar and Stralsund. The topside, which is as tall as an 11-story residential building, houses the Alstom HVDC and AC technology, workshops, living areas and machine rooms.