By Isabella Kaminski

Dutch-German grid operator TenneT has awarded a contract worth approximately €600 million (£174m) to a consortium of Prysmian and Siemens Energy for the offshore HVDC connection project HelWin2.

As part of the contract, cable manufacturer Prysmian has been awarded over €200m for the complete supply, installation and commissioning of HelWin2's submarine and land cable connections.

Siemens will provide the 690 MW Voltage Sourced Converter (VSC) system. The turnkey connection will link the offshore Amrumbank West wind farm in the ‘HelWin’ cluster zone located about 55 km offshore in the North Sea to the German mainland. The grid connection is scheduled to be operational by 2015.

Prysmian will supply approximately 130km of HVDC connections including subsea and land cable types.

Fabio Romeo, Director of Energy Business at Prysmian Group, says: "This achievement reconfirms the Group’s key role to support the new energy policy set by the German government – the most important programme for the development of renewable energies in Europe.”