From Turbine to Grid: Where Offshore Power Really Goes

Full transcript

The electricity starts here at the bottom of the tower, and it has a long way to go. Cables run along the seabed from turbine to turbine. These are the array cables, and they gather the electricity from the whole wind farm. Together they arrive at an offshore substation, a platform out in the middle of the wind farm. Its job is to push the voltage up, because higher voltage means less energy lost on a long trip. Then one much bigger cable carries all of it to shore. That trip can be 10s of kilometres. Where it comes ashore is called the landfall. This is the point where an offshore project stops being offshore. It keeps going underground to an onshore substation which converts it again ready for the network, and from there it joins the grid and goes wherever the grid goes. Worth noticing the last three steps are on land, on someone's coastline and near someone's town. That is one reason the conversation about an offshore project is never only about the sea.