Orlen: Baltic Power has booking agreements for key elements of offshore wind farm

Baltic Power has secured key elements of an offshore wind farm; it has signed reservation agreements for the supply of turbines with a generation capacity of 15 MW, cables to export the produced energy to land and the construction of an onshore energy receiving station, PKN Orlen said.

PKN Orlen said in a communiqué on Monday that its company Baltic Power “has signed reservation agreements for the supply of turbines, cables exporting the produced energy to land and the construction of an onshore energy receiving station. Polish companies are also involved in the supply chain”.

The Baltic Power wind farm is a joint project between Orlen Group and Northland Power. Northland Power is an energy producer engaged in the development, construction, ownership and operation of wind, solar and natural gas energy infrastructure in Asia, Europe, Latin America, and North America.

Baltic Power’s farm area of approximately 130 sq km will be home to 76 Vestas turbines, each with a generating capacity of 15 MW. These are currently some of the most advanced turbines available on the market, and Baltic Power will be one of the first wind farms in the world to use them. The height of the turbines will exceed 200 metres and the rotor working area of each turbine is approximately 43,000 sq m. – the company added in the announcement.

Vestas is one of the largest manufacturers in the world. Over the past 25 years, the company has supplied around 1,500 offshore wind turbines with a total installed capacity of 8,000 MW for projects in Europe.

It was emphasised that the construction of the first offshore wind farm is one of the most important projects implemented by the Orlen Group.

Its launch is planned for 2026. (…) We want to use the knowledge and experience we have gained from the Baltic Power project to implement further investments in the Baltic Sea. When selecting cooperation partners, we pay attention to how their involvement will translate not only into our project, but also into building a local value chain for the entire offshore wind energy sector,” PKN Orlen CEO Daniel Obajtek stressed, quoted in the communiqué.

The signed agreements are a milestone in the development process of the project, the construction of which is scheduled to begin as early as 2024, Northland Power CEO Mike Crawley noted.

Baltic Power has also secured a reservation agreement for the design, manufacture and installation of offshore and onshore export cables. In total, there will be around 355 km of cables in the Baltic Power farm area, of which around 130 km will be so-called internal cables receiving energy from the turbines and delivering it to offshore receiving stations. The remainder will be used to lead out power on the approximately 39km-long section connecting the offshore and onshore stations.

Orlen also announced that NKT will be responsible for the design and manufacture of the offshore export cable. The internal and export cables for the onshore section, meanwhile, will be supplied by the Polish company Tele-fonika Kable, together with JDR Cable Systems. The company will also be responsible for the transport and installation of the cables on the onshore section. The transport and installation of all cables at sea will be carried out by DEME, the owner of one of the largest fleets of ships in the world.

It was explained that the energy generated by the turbines and transported by export cables will go to an onshore substation. A consortium of GE and ENPROM will be responsible for the design, construction and supply of the necessary components.

As part of the ongoing work, GE will carry out the electrical system design and supply the high-voltage electrical components. ENPROM, one of Poland’s largest power construction companies, will be responsible for the overall design and construction of the receiving station, PKN Orlen indicated.

It was recalled that Baltic Power in June, as the first in the Polish part of the Baltic Sea, completed geotechnical studies of the seabed. In July, it signed a booking agreement for the transport and installation of the turbines, and at the beginning of September for the foundations of all elements of the farm and the offshore substations.

The Baltic Power farm, with a capacity of up to 1.2 GW, will be located about 23 km from the coast at Choczew and Łeba. When completed in 2026, it will be able to power more than 1.5 million households with clean energy, Orlen pointed out.

Source: PortalMorski.pl