Siemens Wins Another Service Order for the Veja Mate Offshore Project

Siemens has received an order for the maintenance and upkeep of the Offshore Substation (OSS) and turbine substructures of the Veja Mate offshore project – owned by Highland Capital and Siemens Financial Services with Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners as Mezzanine provider. Siemens will install 67 six megawatt (MW) class turbines for the 400 MW wind power plant and connect it to land with the BorWin2 DC grid connection. In the summer of 2015 Siemens had already received the service order for the wind turbines. It will now also be responsible for the scheduled maintenance and upkeep of the OSS, the turbine transition pieces as well as inspection of their underwater substructures. The maintenance agreement has a term of five years and will begin with commissioning scheduled for mid-2017. The customer is Veja Mate Offshore Project GmbH, a member of Highland Group Holdings Ltd., Copenhagen Infrastructure II and Siemens Financial Services (SFS).

"We are able to service a multitude of different systems offshore and obtain the skills to reliably and sustainably provide full maintenance of electrical, mechanical and structural components, including planning and logistics as well as fault clearance for complex projects – built by Siemens or other market players," states Ralf Christian, CEO of the Siemens Energy Management Division. "Our strength is our network of partners and suppliers, our planning skills, our well-trained technicians and reliability in service performance and management of complex service requirements."

Siemens will implement a complete service concept to meet the maintenance needs of projects far offshore such as the Veja Mate offshore wind farm. The exact scope of supply includes the scheduled maintenance and upkeep of the OSS, the 67 transition pieces of the wind turbines, as well as the inspection of their underwater structures. A transition piece is the part that lies between a monopile foundation and the tower of an offshore wind turbine. Siemens will also build and operate an OCC in Hamburg, equipped with SCADA software provided by Veja Mate for the operational control of the wind farm. Siemens will be responsible for the entire offshore logistics, correcting faults on site and using EPCI contractor supplied spare parts and consumables during warranty.

For the turbines, Siemens will provide a highly advanced logistics concept, tailored specifically for far-shore projects, that uses both a helicopter and a specially designed, purpose-built service operation vessel (SOV). To ensure increased energy production this concept allows maintenance work to be carried out at almost all times irrespective of the weather conditions or wave height. The comprehensive service concept benefits from synergies resulting from close collaboration between different Siemens Divisions, their many years of experience in building, operating and maintaining complex offshore projects as well as the use of standard, in-house systems for planning and documenting the maintenance work and operating data of the offshore wind farm.

The Veja Mate offshore power plant is being built in the German waters of the North Sea, northwest of the island of Borkum at a distance of 115 kilometers off the East Frisian coast. The wind turbines in the SWT-6.0-154 series will be installed at ocean depths between 39 and 41 meters starting in January 2017. The 400 MW project will be connected via an offshore grid connection using high-voltage direct current (HVDC) technology from Siemens. Siemens handed the BorWin2 grid connection over to the operator in January 2015. This grid connection can transmit a total of just under 800 MW of clean wind energy, which is sufficient to supply power to approximately one million German homes. To date, Siemens has installed four HVDC grid connections and four wind power plants in the German waters of the North Sea alone; another DC-Link is ordered. Furthermore, Siemens will supply wind turbines to five offshore wind projects which are currently under construction in the German North and Baltic Sea.