The Anonymous Widower

N-Sea To Connect German Offshore Wind Farm To Dutch Gas Platform

The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on offshoreWIND.biz.

This is the sub-heading.

Dutch upstream oil and gas company, ONE-Dyas, has awarded N-Sea with a contract to install a subsea power cable between the Riffgat offshore wind farm in the German North Sea and the new, to-be-built N05-A gas production platform.

At a first look it appears that wind power is being used to power the gas production platform.

Other points from the article include.

• The distance of the connecting cable is ten kilometres.
• The Dutch government approved the scheme in June 2022.
• A final investment decision was made in September 2022.

I have some thoughts and further information.

Borkum, Rottumerplaat and Schiermonnikoog

The article says this about the position of the gas platform.

The N05-A platform will be installed some 20 kilometres north of the islands of Borkum, Rottumerplaat and Schiermonnikoog, and approximately one and a half kilometres from German waters.

This Google Map shows the three islands.

Note.

1. Borkum is the horseshoe-shaped German island in the North-East corner of the map.
2. Schiermonnikoog is the long and thin island in the West.
3. Rottumerplaat is the larger of the two Dutch islands in middle map.
4. Eemhaven, which I wrote about in The Train Station At The Northern End Of The Netherlands, is in the South-East corner of the map.

Shipping routes run up the River Ems and German-Dutch border in the East of the map

Riffgat Wind Farm

This web page on the EWE web site, gives this description of the wind farm.

EWE has built the first commercial wind farm in the German North Sea in summer 2013 with Riffgat. The modern wind farm has a total capacity of 108 megawatts of power and can supply around 120,000 households with environmentally friendly electricity. In just 14 months of construction, the 30 wind turbines of the 3.6 megawatt class have been installed 15 kilometers off the north seas of Borkum. The rotor diameter of the units is 120 meters, while the hub height is 90 meters, which corresponds to the height of the Bremen dome. Overall, the plants are 150 meters high from the water surface to the top rotor blade tip. They are founded on 70 meter long steel foundations (monopiles), 40 meters deep in the sea bottom. The water depth in the wind farm is between 18 and 23 meters. In addition to the wind power plants, Riffgat also consists of a substation which transports the generated electricity to a better transportable voltage level.

It looks a pretty standard 100 MW wind farm with fixed foundations.

The N05-A Platform

The article says this about the N05-A project.

The N05-A project is part of the so-called GEMS area, an area approximately 20 to 80 kilometres north of the Ems estuary. ONE-Dyas, together with partners Hansa Hydrocarbons and EBN, aims to extract natural gas from the N05-A field as well as surrounding fields in the German and Dutch North Sea.

The GEMS area has a web site with a URL with a .co.uk extension.

It has an informative video, which I don’t think would go down with Dutch chapter of Just Stop Oil.

The North Sea’s First Gas Platform To Run Entirely On Wind Power

The article says this about the N05-A project.

While the N05-A platform will not be the first in the North Sea to run on wind energy, it will be the first to do so entirely.

Hywind Tampen floating wind farm will be the first.

Conclusion

This looks like a good pragmatic solution to me.

I can see more connections between offshore wind farms and oil and gas facilities all over the world.

April 13, 2023 - Posted by AnonW | Energy | Eemshaven, EWE, Germany, Hywind Tampen, Just Stop Oil, Natural Gas, Offshore Operations Decarbonisation, Offshore Wind Power, The Netherlands, Wind Power