The Greater Gabbard offshore wind farm, planed with 140 wind turbines, each 3.6MW from Siemens Wind Power (Denmark) is the world largest windfarm with a capacity of 500 megawatts, located in the North Sea 25 km (respective 46km) away from the coast line of Suffolk.
The owner is Greater Gabbard Offshore Winds Ltd., U.K. The 33/132kV transformer station with its three 180MVA transformers will be mounted on an offshore platform to be located at the wind farm area. The power will be exported via three three-phase 132kV XLPE submarine cables. The point of coupling to the grid is realized in Sizewell Village, Suffolk. Next door Siemens is building a reactive power compensation substation with 3 SVC PLUS systems to allow the wind farm to meet the requirements of the GB grid code.

 

The main component of the SVC is a state of the art Voltage Sourced Converter type (VSC), also referred to as SVC PLUS. Based on true multilevel VSC technology the SVC PLUS concept provides highly dynamic continuously adjustable reactive power support to the ac system.
Roughly a third of the wind farm is planed to be in service in 2009. The final commissioning of Greater Gabbard is scheduled for 2010. When the entire offshore wind farm is completed, it is going to provide enough energy for approximately 350,000 homes and reduce the CO2 emissions by 1,350,000 tonnes in a year.

 

In May 2009 Siemens Energy Transmission Power Solutions was awarded a turnkey project for a 33 kV Static Var Compensators (SVC PLUS^®) by Electricidade de Moçambique. The SVC PLUS^® has a nominal operating range of -35 MVAr inductive to +35 MVAr capacitive. It is independent from grid configurations (network studies) and offers the relocabability which are two special requierments within this project. The SVC PLUS^® utilizes the superior multi-level IGBT converter technology and will be installed in the Mocuba substation with a scheduled in-service date of End 2010.

 

Transpower New Zealand, owner and operator of New Zealand´s high-voltage power transmission grid, decided to strengthen its transmission grid to cover the increasing power demand and to assure the future power supply on the South Island. One element within the scope of this project was the commissioning of an SVC PLUS^® compensator at the Kikiwa substation near Nelson, at the crossing of two 220 kV links and two east-west links. The SVC PLUS^® system is used to meet the reactive power demand of the connected load during and after system faults.