Houston-based engineering and construction giant McDermott has won its largest-ever renewable energy contract from TenneT to provide engineering, procurement, construction, installation and commissioning (EPCIC) services.
The win is for the BorWin6 980MW High-Voltage, Direct Current (HVDC) project located 190km offshore Germany, on the Platform North Sea Cluster 7, at a depth of 40m, according to a statement from the company. It will provide services in consortium with Global Energy Interconnection Research Institute and C-EPRI Electric Power Engineering (GEIRI / C-EPRI)
Electricity generated from offshore wind farms will be converted into direct current and transported to an onshore converter station located 45 km onshore near Büttel, Germany, McDermott stated.
Commenting on the contract, Tareq Kawash, McDermott’s Senior Vice President for EMEA, said: “Our integrated EPCIC delivery model, combined with nearly a century of experience executing some of the most challenging offshore projects in the world, make us ideally suited to support TenneT on this important offshore grid connection project.”
“Additionally, our HVDC Centre of Excellence in The Hague is strategically positioned to lead our execution delivery in the European market.”
Scope of work
Scope of work on the HVDC offshore platform includes EPIC, and fabrication and transport of the topside module and jacket while onshore converter station includes EPC and commissioning.
Meanwhile, GEIRI / C-EPRI’s scope includes the engineering, manufacture, supply, installation supervision and commissioning of the HVDC system for the onshore and offshore converter stations.
McDermott will lead the consortium with GEIRI / C-EPRI through an integrated execution model utilising McDermott’s extensive global engineering centres and strategically located fabrication yards
The company stated that engineering and project management will be executed from its HVDC centre in The Hague, Netherlands with support from its Chennai and Gurgaon offices, located in India. The fabrication of the topside will be executed by the Qingdao McDermott Wuchuan (QMW) Fabrication Facility in Qingdao, China, and the jacket from McDermott’s Batam fabrication yard in Indonesia.
Samik Mukherjee, McDermott’s Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, stated: “This major EPCIC award elevates our growing energy transition portfolio and signifies our expansion into the thriving offshore wind market, further strengthening our global ambitions in the renewables sector.”
Meanwhile, Tim Meyerjürgens, Chief Operating Officer of TenneT, said: “With regard to the high expansion targets for offshore wind energy in the North Sea, we are pleased that an international consortium was able to prevail in our tendering procedure. Even though this consortium is new to us, it has a lot of experience in the offshore as well as the HVDC business.”
He added: “In terms of speeding up the process, we have taken the lead with this project: It was initially planned with a connection capacity of 930MW. In the technical planning, we were able to increase the capacity by 50 MW. The project was recently confirmed in the latest grid development plan.”
The company stated that the contract for the “stations” lot has been awarded, the second “cable” lot for the cable between the two stations will follow in summer 2022.
