ABB to transmit offshore wind for Germany

OERLIKON, Switzerland, March 25 (UPI) -- The automation and power engineering major ABB will link offshore wind to Germany's power grid.

ABB will provide the technology to connect the self-proclaimed world's largest offshore wind farm to the German power grid in a contract worth more than $400 million.

ABB said in a statement it received the order from a unit of German utility E.ON. The proposed link will use ABB's high voltage direct current light technology to transmit large amounts of power underwater and underground, with minimal impact to the environment.

The Swiss firm said it will build a rectifier station on an independent platform more than 80 miles out in the North Sea and it will connect the 80 wind turbines situated in the Borkum-2 offshore wind power cluster to the German grid by transmitting power to a receiving station on land using undersea cables and landlines.

The wind farm is scheduled to become operational in 2009 with a combined output estimated at 400 megawatts. Many new wind energy development plans have reportedly emerged since a law was passed in December 2006 requiring German grid companies to connect German wind farms as soon as they are ready to be put into service.