The Antwerp-based construction company Smulders will participate in the construction of a power outlet in the North Sea for the German grid operator 50Hertz, a subsidiary of the Belgian high-voltage group Elia.
The offshore power connector, known as ‘North Sea Connector 2,’ will enable up to 2 gigawatts of wind power electricity to be transmitted to shore. It is expected to be completed by the end of 2034.
Responsible for the steel foundation
Smulders, a company based in Arendonk, near Antwerp, and led by David Muylaert, will be responsible for the steel foundation of the offshore platform. It will be built at the Smulders shipyard in Vlissingen, the Netherlands.
On the platform, alternating current (AC) from offshore wind turbines will be converted to direct current (DC). This electricity will then be transmitted via subsea cables to the mainland, where it will be converted back to AC by another transformer and fed into the grid.
Familiar territory for Smulders
The ‘North Sea Connector 2’ project is being carried out by a consortium commissioned by 50Hertz. The consortium consists of the German company Siemens Energy and Neptun Smulders Offshore Renewables (NSORe), a joint venture between the German shipyard Neptun Werft and Smulders, a company that is part of the French group Eiffage and employs approximately 2,400 people.
Smulders is no stranger to this type of project: in a joint venture with HSM Offshore Energy and Iv, it was also awarded the contract for Princess Elisabeth Island, the world’s first artificial energy island, located off the Belgian coast by grid operator Elia.
500 long-term jobs
50Hertz is still negotiating with NSORe regarding a second, similar platform. The two projects combined, which are both part of NordOstLink and could create more than 500 long-term jobs across participating companies and suppliers in the German state, would represent approximately 2.5 billion euros for NSORe.
50Hertz is the electricity transmission system operator for northeastern Germany (Berlin, Brandenburg, Hamburg, Mecklenburg…) and is approximately 80% owned by the Elia Group.
The NordOstLink is one of Germany’s largest and most ambitious energy infrastructure projects. It combines an offshore connection system with an onshore high-voltage transmission line.
It will transport wind energy over approximately 200 kilometers from the west coast of Schleswig-Holstein to Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, where the onshore converter station will be located nearby.
The offshore converter platforms play a key role in integrating large-scale offshore wind capacity into the German power grid and support broader European energy security and decarbonization goals.
