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Power Control For The Vast North Sea Offshore Wind Farm

The Galloper Offshore Windfarm completes the second part of the Greater Gabbard / Galloper site, located 27km (17miles) off the Suffolk coast of England. In the onshore substation for the site 2 of Sollatek’s automatic voltage regulators control the power supply.

The 56 wind turbines that make up the Galloper site are designed to generate 336MW of electricity; enough to power 335,000 average UK households. These turbines are mounted on steel monopiles that sit in water depths of 27 – 36m and transmit the generated electricity to land via two sub-sea cables; each measuring 45km.

To regulate the power for the critical equipment on the on-shore station, GE elected to use Sollatek’s long proven technology in this field.

The Sollatek AVR3S4x800 provides ample power to control the site and ensure a wide stabilisation input range of +/-20% . Sollatek’s AVRs employ high performance solid state technology, which not only makes them ultra-fast at correcting voltage variations but also more reliable and less expensive than other stabiliser technologies. This design also means that they are maintenance free and offer longer operational life. For the Galloper project, a custom-engineered Pre-Bias system was also required by GE – a unique feature that could only be included in a “smart” AVR such as Sollatek’s.

This Pre-Bias system allows the AVR to be “pre-warned” about an expected unusually high/low voltage transition and so it can respond appropriately, maintaining the output voltage within the specified parameters at all times.

The Sollatek AVR is also equipped with comprehensive alarm and monitoring outputs for interface to the site SCADA system. Moreover there is internal measurement and data logging and so data files can be downloaded for analysis. A 2G modem option is also available whereby data is uploaded to the Sollatek Cloud and available through secure login on the Sollatek portal using a regular web browser.

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