Vinci and Siemens Energy, in a joint venture, have been awarded a €2.9 billion contract to design, construct, and install two electrical conversion platforms for an offshore wind farm in the North Sea, the French construction group announced on Wednesday.
German grid operator 50Hertz has entrusted Dragados Offshore, a subsidiary of Vinci’s Cobra IS, and Siemens Energy with this project. It encompasses an offshore platform that will convert the alternating current produced by the LanWin 3 wind farm, located 120 km off the German coast, into direct current, Vinci detailed in a press release.
The contract also includes “an onshore station situated in Schwerin, northeastern Germany, which will convert this direct current back into alternating current. This will then be injected into the electrical grid for transmission and distribution in the southern part of the country.”
The offshore platform is set to be constructed at Dragados Offshore’s shipyard in Andalusia, southern Spain, according to the same source.
With the addition of this contract, Cobra IS “will be responsible for the realization of nine offshore electrical conversion platforms” with a combined capacity of “approximately 16 GW,” Vinci specified.