First Steel Cut for RWE THOR Platform

HSM Offshore Energy announced it hosted a steel cutting ceremony in Schiedam, the Netherlands, to mark the start of construction on the offshore substation and the jacket for RWE’s THOR Offshore High Voltage Station (OHVS) project. 

HSM, together with its key subcontractors Iv-Offshore & Energy and GE Renewable Energy, was awarded the engineering, procurement, construction, installation and commissioning of the offshore high voltage substation and its jacket foundation in 2022.

According to the builder, the open design of the substation, which will have a capacity of more than 1,000 megawatts (MW) and overall weight below 3000MT is a gamechanger in the offshore wind market, offering best AC power / weight ratio in the history. This reduces the use of structural steel and the energy needed during manufacturing – with steel sourcing and fabrication in Europe.

RWE will build the THOR wind farm off the Danish west coast – approximately 22 kilometers from Thorsminde on the west coast of Jutland. To connect the wind farm to the Danish grid, RWE will build two new substations – one at sea and one on land.

The substation at sea is the nerve center of the wind farm: the electricity produced by the individual wind turbines is collected here and transformed to transmission-level voltage. The green electricity will be transported through export cables to the new-build onshore substation.

THOR will be Denmark’s largest offshore wind farm to date and will be capable of producing enough green electricity to supply the equivalent of more than one million Danish households.

RWE is already operating the Danish Rødsand 2 offshore wind farm, which is located south of the Danish island Lolland, approximately 10 kilometers southeast of Rødbyhavn. The wind farm has an installed capacity of 207 MW (RWE share: 20%) and has been in operation since 2010.