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The first of four directional drills under the coastline, beach, and seabed in the Lubiatowo area, Poland, has been completed, paving the way for connecting the 1.2 GW Baltic Power offshore wind farm to its onshore substation.
PKN Orlen, which is developing the project together with Canada’s Northland Power, confirmed that the first onshore connection has been completed for the Baltic Power offshore wind farm.
The 1.4-kilometre tunnel will house power transmission cables, and the drilling was conducted using horizontal directional drilling (HDD) technology.
The completed section is the first of four underground corridors, designed to hold 30-centimetre-diameter cables. The subsea and land cables will be supplied by TELE-FONIKA Kable (TFK) and JDR Cable systems under a contract signed with the developer in 2023.
NKT will deliver the offshore export cables for the project to be built in the Baltic Sea, 23 kilometres off the Polish coast.
Part of the drilling operation took place offshore, utilising divers and a jack-up rig to complete the underwater section. In total, the drilling will result in the extraction of over 8,000 cubic metres of spoil from all four drills.
“Progress on Baltic Power, the largest renewable energy project in our region, is on schedule and already well advanced. We have completed the first and are carrying out further drilling for submarine cables connecting offshore substations to land. This is the first project of its kind in Poland and is unique compared to other offshore wind projects carried out in Europe”, said Jaroslaw Broda, Member of the Baltic Power Management Board.
Meanwhile, approximately eight kilometres away in Osieki Leborskie, construction is underway on the onshore substation. Together with the cable connection, this facility will receive energy from the Baltic Power wind farm and integrate it into the national power grid. The power line linking to the substation will also be installed underground.
The construction of the onshore substation is already more than 40 per cent complete, with full completion scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2025, said PKN Orlen. A consortium of GE and Enprom is responsible for the design, construction, and delivery of the necessary components for the onshore substation.
Baltic Power will be one of the first European offshore wind projects to use Vestas’ new 15 MW wind turbine, which until now has only been installed as a prototype at the Østerild National test centre in Western Jutland, Denmark.
Scheduled to commence operations in late 2026, Baltic Power is expected to deliver renewable energy to over 1.5 million Polish households. |
