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SECTION SPONSOR ENGINEERING SERVICES


Substation locations are critical to overall costs


The geographical location of a substation within an offshore windfarm has a big impact on the inter-array cable layout and influences the overall cost of the cable system. This is not trivial when taking into account the typically non-linear seabed conditions and electrical characteristics of cables.


Only an extensive search of possible substation locations will return the greatest value solution, which can be a time consuming process. Kinewell Energy's KLOC software designs offshore windfarm cable layouts in a very short period of time making such an extensive search now possible.


KLOC


KLOC optimises the design of inter-array cable layouts of offshore windfarms taking into account the electrical system constraints, the cost of cable, the seabed conditions and the operational cost through electrical losses.


CASE STUDY


Kinewell Energy has undertaken a case study of the 576 MW Gwynt-y-Môr windfarm, which has two substations. Gwynt-y-Môr is currently the second largest operating windfarm in the world. For simplicity, the location of just one substation has been considered for this article. In reality, if the location of the second substation were to change, then the results displayed here would also change.


This makes the substation siting problem increasingly difficult with more substations, as is the trend with increasing offshore windfarm installed capacities. By utilising the incredible speed of the KLOC software, an extensive search of substation locations can be undertaken.


In Figure 1 (ABOVE), the KLOC software designed a new inter-array cable layout for each substation location. The values relate to the cost relative to the lowest cost location within the diagram, where it is shown that moving the substation by just a few hundred metres can influence the inter- array cable cost by several million pounds.


In Figure 2 (RIGHT), the inter-array cable design was kept the same while micro- siting the substation.


COST SAVINGS


During Kinewell Energy’s case study of the 576 MW Gwynt-y-Môr offshore windfarm, a saving of £2.2m, or 3% of the installed cable cost, was achieved relative to what has been installed by the developer. During this process the West substation was moved by 1.3 km.


Kinewell Energy


www.windenergynetwork.co.uk


29


NORTH EAST OF ENGLAND


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