Amprion Offshore is renaming the two offshore grid connection systems LanWin1 and LanWin3. The reason for this is a change in the wind farm areas to be connected in the North Sea. In future, the projects will be named BalWin1 and BalWin2.
The recently published area development plan (“Flächenentwicklungs-plan“) of the Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency provides for BalWin1 (formerly LanWin1) to be commissioned as early as 2029 instead of 2031 and BalWin2 (formerly LanWin3) as early as 2030 instead of 2033.
This is happening against the backdrop that the German government is aiming for a much faster expansion of offshore wind energy than originally planned. According to the Offshore Wind Energy Act, 30GW of offshore wind energy are to be installed by 2030 – 10GW more than previously planned. This leads to changes in the commissioning dates and the wind farm areas to be connected in the North Sea.
The project names of offshore grid connection systems are traditionally linked to the wind farm areas in the North Sea. For example, there is the so-called LanWin cluster with wind farm areas 11 and 12 or the BalWin cluster with areas 9 and 10. In the first part of the names, the East Frisian islands act as the eponym, the second part stands for "wind". LanWin therefore stands for "LangeoogWind", BalWin for "BaltrumWind".
The two offshore grid connection systems BalWin1 and BalWin2 will connect offshore wind farms in the North Sea to the onshore transmission grid in Wehrendorf (Lower Saxony) and Westerkappeln (North Rhine-Westphalia). Each of them has a transmission capacity of 2GW.