Cable failure has struck a wind farm in the North Sea, but its “meshed grid solution has prevented an outage.
Belgian grid operator Elia said the Rentel wind farm, 21 miles off the country’s coast, was which has meant reduced capacity for it and other projects Rentel is linked to.
The cause of the problem is being investigated, but Elia underlined that the country’s security of supply is not in jeopardy.
Despite the damage, the wind farm is able to continue to generate power because it is linked into a “meshed high-voltage grid” with three other wind farms – Mermaid, Northwester 2 and Seastar.
Rentel has two export cables: one running to the coast (currently interrupted) and another running to the Modular Offshore Grid (MOG).
© Supplied by EliaTo avoid overloading the MOG’s cables, generation capacity is being limited from the four projects during high wind periods, with the wind farm owners being compensated.
Combined, the quartet boast around 800 megawatts (MW) of capacity.
The MOG has been operational since 2019, bundling electricity from the four wind farms and transmitting it to the mainland via joint subsea cables.
Elia designed the project so it “guarantees that the wind farms can always transmit the power they generate to the mainland, even if one of the cables is temporarily unavailable”.
Cable failures continue to plague the industry and have been identified as a significant barrier to offshore wind projects.
There remains a significant challenge to insuring such cables, with one expert noting last year that 85% of offshore wind claims relate to underwater cables, at an average settlement of £9m.
Another broker said the high number of claims is affecting capacity and coverage.
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