High Tech Yellow Boxes Transmit Germany's Wind Power to Shore

borwin2 siemens — BorWin2 converter station, image: Siemens

Off the North Sea coast of Germany is an impressive array of wind farms that feed an enormous amount of renewable energy to the European power grid.

Due to their physical distance from land however, the medium voltage AC power generated by the individual wind turbines is first routed to a central point in the field where it is then transformed into high voltage AC and subsequently converted into DC power via a giant 25,000 ton platform-based converter station.

siemens offshore wind converter room — The converter room is the heart of the platform. This is where HVDC-Plus technology is used to convert the AC current generated in the wind farms into low-loss DC current. This is then transported to the mainland by marine cable, with minimal losses of less than four percent. The converter technology is installed in two separate converter rooms on the platform and also used on the land station. Image courtesy Siemens

The DC power, which incurs far less transmission losses than AC, is then routed shoreside via a power cable to the grid.

Siemens released a video today that describes this system: