Hitachi Energy has won an order from Samsung C&T Corporation, a large engineering and construction company, to connect ADNOC’s offshore operations to the onshore power grid in the United Arab Emirates owned and operated by Abu Dhabi National Energy Company PJSC (TAQA).
Hitachi Energy’s HVDC Light technology and MACH digital control platform will enable the transfer of cleaner and more efficient power from the mainland to power ADNOC’s offshore production operations, enabling a carbon footprint reduction of ADNOC’s offshore operations by more than 30%.
With a capacity of 3200 MW, the two HVDC links will be the most powerful power-from-shore solution in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region to date. It is also the first HVDC power-from-shore solution outside Norwegian waters.
The entire power-from-shore project will comprise two HVDC power links, which will connect two clusters of offshore oil and gas production facilities to the mainland power grid, a distance of up to 140 km for each cluster.
Hitachi Energy is supplying four converter stations, which convert AC power to DC for transmission in the subsea cables, then reconvert it to AC from DC for use in the offshore power systems. The HVDC technology will be supplied from Hitachi Energy’s global competence centers. Also included in the order are system studies, design and engineering, supply, installation supervision and commissioning. Hitachi Energy will support the customers with a long-term life-cycle service agreement leveraging digital technologies to ensure system availability and reliability over the HVDC links’ long operating life.
HVDC Light is a voltage source converter technology that was pioneered by Hitachi Energy. It is the preferred technology for many grid applications, including interconnecting national power grids, integrating offshore wind parks with mainland transmission systems, feeding more power into congested city centers, interconnecting asynchronous networks that operate at different frequencies, and power from shore.
HVDC Light’s defining features include compact converter stations (which is extremely important in space-critical applications like offshore wind, offshore production facilities and city-center infeeds), low electrical losses, and black-start capability to restore power after a grid outage.
