A milestone for the nearshore-project Nordergründe has been reached: Under the project leadership of the Bremen-based project developer wpd, the OWP Nordergründe GmbH & Co. KG was able to complete installation of the transformer platform for Nordergründe. The more than 2,000 tons transformer platform is now sitting on a monopile foundation at the wind farm which is situated at 15 km to the North-East of the island of Wangerooge, bringing the completion of the 111 MW wind farm within reach. 

Commissioning of the project had originally been planned for the end of the year 2016, but was set back by the insolvency proceedings of the transformer platform manufacturer, BVT Bremen GmbH & Co. KG, in the fall of 2016. After analyzing different possibilities, banks and equity providers decided to finish the construction of the transformer platform under wpd's leadership on their own.

"We were able to fully implement the plan for further construction of the transformer platform, which was decided in November of 2016, and we were able to install the transformer platform almost to the day," summarizes Achim Berge Olsen, managing director of OWP Nordergründe GmbH & Co. KG and of wpd offshore GmbH. "I'm happy to say that we have advanced the project by a giant step and that we are now able to prepare for final commissioning."

Besides construction of the transformer platform, wpd has also been responsible for the installation of the 18 turbines of the Senvion 6.2M126 type and will further on operate the wind farm. The Nordergründe wind farm is situated in water depths of 10 meters within the 12 sea mile zone of the German North Sea and 15 km to the North-East of the island of Wangerooge. Grid connection is via individual connection by the grid operator Tennet. All the component manufacturers are from the german North-Western Region. Besides of Senvion (wind turbine generators), these are the companies Ambau (foundations), NSW (internal wind farm cabling) and Bilfinger Marine & Offshore Systems, now Van Oord (installation).

Financial close of the projects had been completed in June of 2015 with the participation of European Investment Bank and KfW IPEX. Besides wpd, John Laing Group plc and Gothaer Insurance Group are acting as equity providers. 

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