Hornsea Onshore Substation

The Hornsea Onshore Substation is being constructed for Hornsea Project Two, which is within the Hornsea Zone of the North Sea. With a total capacity of 1.4 gigawatt (GW), the off-shore wind farm is expected to be the largest of its kind worldwide. As part of this, a new onshore substation facility will transform the power produced by Hornsea Project Two wind farm, before connecting to the National Grid. Billington Structures provided the structural steel infrastructure for Balfour Beatty on both phase I and II.

Hornsea Project Two is expected to generate approximately 2,000 jobs during construction and an additional 130 positions once it is operational. It will provide clean energy for approximately 1.3 million British households. The Hornsea Zone covers an area of 4,735 km², and it has the potential to generate more than 4 GW of renewable energy, which would account for 4% of the UK’s overall power generation capacity.

The Hornsea Zone is situated off the Yorkshire coast, where the normal water depth ranges between 30m and 40m, reaching a maximum depth of 70m. HP2 is located approximately 89 kilometres from the Yorkshire coast, covering an area of 462km² at the centre of the Hornsea Zone, which also hosts the 1.2GW Hornsea Project One.

All of the electrical output from the project will be conveyed to the National Grid via the newly built onshore facilities at HP2. The new Hornsea onshore substation will follow the same route as Hornsea’s HP1 transmission system. The Hornsea onshore high-voltage direct current (HVDC) converter station or high-voltage alternating current (HVAC) substation will be constructed midway from the landfall to the National Grid transmission station. The facility will be approximately 200m long, 150m wide and 40m high.

The total length of the offshore transmission subsea cables will be 150km, whereas the onshore transmission cable will be 40km long. Ørsted will operate the wind project from its operations hub, currently under construction in Grimsby, which will be the largest facility of its kind in the UK upon its opening.