RWE and Total Energies to jointly develop OranjeWind offshore farm

By Team IO

Energy companies RWE and TotalEnergies entered into a partnership agreement to jointly deliver the OranjeWind offshore wind project, the first system integration project in the Dutch market. It aims to perfectly match intermittent wind power generation with flexible energy demand, thus contributing to grid stability. TotalEnergies will acquire a 50% equity stake in the offshore wind farm from RWE. 

RWE and TotalEnergies have also decided to invest in building the OranjeWind offshore wind farm, which will have an installed capacity of 795 megawatts (MW). OranjeWind is located in the North Sea, approximately 53 kilometers from IJmuiden on the Dutch coast, in the province of Noord-Holland. RWE will lead the wind farm’s development, construction, and operation as part of the joint venture. Offshore construction will start in 2026, with full commissioning expected in early 2028. With an expected annual generation of around 3 terawatt hours, OranjeWind will produce enough green electricity to supply the equivalent of more than one million Dutch households.

Paving the way for innovative solutions

Part of the OranjeWind project is also to accelerate the commercial application of new offshore technologies by supporting a vast amount of innovators and start-ups in demonstrating their innovation in an operational environment. To allow more efficient use of ocean space, an offshore demonstration floating solar farm is currently being developed by RWE in collaboration with SolarDuck, a Dutch-Norwegian company that specializes in offshore floating solar solutions. Furthermore, the partners are looking at using scanning LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging system), a technology that can accurately measure wind at long ranges. In addition, the OranjeWind project is also to demonstrate a seabed battery system developed in cooperation with Verlume and a pumped hydro-storage system in collaboration with Ocean Grazer.

Wind and solar curtailing cost million cubic meters of gas savings

If solar panels and wind turbines had not been switched off, the Netherlands could have saved 350 million cubic meters of gas in the second quarter of 2024, figures by climate policy platform Energieopwek.nl show. This amount of gas is enough to heat up all The Hague buildings.

Experienced partners selected to deliver OranjeWind offshore wind farm

For the OranjeWind offshore wind farm, a turbine supply agreement was signed with Vestas for 53 of its 15-MW turbines (V236), and a foundation supply agreement was made with SiF for 53 monopiles. TKF will supply the inter-array cables. Jan De Nul was contracted to transport and install the foundations and wind turbines, using its floating heavy lift vessel “Les Alizés” and its jack-up installation vessel “Voltaire”. The offshore grid connection will be implemented by the network operator TenneT. For this purpose, the inter-array cables will be connected to the TenneT-owned offshore substation, where the export cables will run to the high-voltage onshore substation in Wijk aan Zee.