Amprion Offshore has announced that it aims to complete the two offshore grid connection systems LanWin1 and LanWin3 two and three years earlier than initially planned.
In addition, the company will rename the systems to BalWin1 and BalWin2 to reflect a change in the wind farm areas to be connected in the North Sea.
The newly published German area development plan provides for the BalWin1 (formerly LanWin1) to be commissioned as early as 2029 instead of 2031. BalWin2 (formerly LanWin3) can be commissioned as soon as 2030 instead of 2033.
BalWin1 and BalWin2 will connect offshore wind farms in the North Sea to the onshore transmission grid in Wehrendorf (Lower Saxony) and Westerkappeln (North Rhine-Westphalia).
They will be installed parallel to one another for the most part on land and at sea, too.
Each has a transmission capacity of 2GW and together they will be able to satisfy the electricity needs of around four million people from offshore wind energy.
The area development plan now provides for a change in the wind farm areas to be connected from 11-1 and 12-1, which covers the LanWin cluster of wind farms, to 9-1 and 10-1, which is the BalWin cluster.
As such, Amprion has had to adjust the project names.
“Of course, the renaming can initially lead to misunderstandings among the public, but there are no effects on the onshore planning. The adjustments only affect the offshore wind farm areas and the project names,” said Stefan Sennekamp, project spokesperson at Amprion.
Christoph Evers, overall project manager at Amprion, added: “The new schedule for our projects is now even more ambitious than before. However, Amprion explicitly supports the acceleration. We will do our part to achieve the goals.”