In ABB’s largest order to date for medium voltage wind turbine converters, 95 units will be delivered to GE Renewable Energy and installed at the UK’s Dogger Bank Wind Farm.
The 95 PCS6000 medium voltage converters will be installed in GE’s Haliade-X 13MW wind turbines, which will produce 1.2GW of power in the first phase of the Dogger Bank project.
ABB’s converters will play the vital role of taking the power produced by GE’s wind turbines and converting it to the right voltage and frequency for the wind farm grid. The converters are rated to handle the high-power output, with one rotation of each 220-meter diameter rotor generating enough electricity to last a UK household two days.
“The selection of the right converter is critical to achieving the performance and reliability that yields the maximum return on investment. And medium-voltage converters are the optimum choice for today’s high-power wind turbines,” said Chris Poynter, division president for System Drives, ABB Motion.
ABB in Turgi, Switzerland is leading project engineering while the PCS6000 converters will be manufactured by ABB in Łódź, Poland. First delivery is scheduled for summer 2021 with completion in late 2022.
The Dogger Bank Wind Farm is being developed in three phases as a 50:50 joint venture between SSE Renewables and Equinor. It is located more than 130km from the North East coast of England and will have a total power output of 3.6GW, capable of powering six million homes.
ABB’s collaboration with GE began in 2017 and the companies have worked closely to optimize the PCS6000 converter for the Haliade-X platform. This included successful test operations on a turbine installed at the Port of Rotterdam, Netherlands.