IN Brief:
- Eiffage, through Smulders and the NSORe joint venture, has won a German offshore converter station contract.
- The NSC2 project will support transmission of up to 2GW of offshore wind power to the German grid.
- The package covers an offshore platform, jacket foundation, onshore station interfaces, installation, commissioning, and turnkey delivery.
Eiffage, through its Belgian subsidiary Smulders and the NSORe joint venture, has won a contract to deliver a 2GW converter station package for Germany’s North Sea Connector 2 offshore grid connection project.
NSORe, a joint venture between Smulders and Neptun Werft, has secured the award as part of a consortium with Siemens Energy. The client is 50Hertz, the transmission system operator for northern and eastern Germany. Negotiations have also started for a second project of similar scale.
The NSC2 package consists of an offshore converter platform and an onshore station. The consortium is responsible for complete implementation and turnkey handover, covering system planning, procurement, construction, onshore and offshore installation, and commissioning.
NSORe will engineer and construct both the topside and the jacket foundation. The topside will house transformers, switchgear, and converters that transform alternating current generated offshore into direct current for transmission to shore.
Production will take place across facilities in Rostock and Vlissingen, supporting industrial activity in Germany and the Netherlands. Siemens Energy is responsible for the high-voltage elements, including the onshore station, with commissioning scheduled for the end of 2034.
Once operational, the connection will allow up to 2GW of offshore wind power to be transmitted from the North Sea to the onshore grid. Siemens Energy will supply transmission technology including transformers, converters, and SF6-free gas-insulated switchgear from German factories.
Offshore converter platforms are among the most complex infrastructure assets now being procured in Europe. They combine shipyard fabrication, heavy steel construction, electrical engineering, marine logistics, foundation design, offshore installation, commissioning, and long-term service support.
As offshore wind farms move farther from shore and connection capacities increase, transmission systems need larger and more sophisticated converter platforms. The 2GW standard is intended to increase capacity and reduce the number of separate platforms required, but each asset becomes heavier, more technically demanding, and more dependent on specialist fabrication capacity.
The construction workload extends well beyond renewable generation. Converter platforms, export cables, substations, grid reinforcements, ports, and logistics infrastructure all have to be delivered before offshore wind capacity can be fully used. Turbines may be the most visible assets, but transmission infrastructure is increasingly the limiting factor in energy project delivery.
The award also demonstrates how grid construction is becoming an industrial manufacturing challenge. European shipyards, fabrication halls, steelwork specialists, electrical manufacturers, cable suppliers, and heavy-lift contractors are competing for a growing pipeline of work from transmission system operators. Capacity in those supply chains will influence how quickly offshore wind targets can be converted into functioning grid connections.
Production in Rostock-Warnemünde and Vlissingen supports regional manufacturing capability while reducing some exposure to long-distance supply chains. That approach requires steady order pipelines, because investment in large fabrication facilities, skilled labour, and specialist equipment cannot be justified through isolated projects alone.
For contractors, the NSC2 package shows how construction, manufacturing, maritime engineering, and high-voltage electrical systems are becoming more closely integrated. A converter platform is fabricated like a marine asset, equipped like a power station, installed like offshore infrastructure, and operated as part of the national grid.
The port and logistics requirements are equally demanding. Large topsides and jacket foundations need deepwater access, heavy-lift capacity, laydown areas, fabrication halls, load-out planning, marine coordination, and specialist installation vessels. Those constraints can shape programme risk as much as the electrical equipment itself.
Germany’s offshore wind expansion depends on these grid links being delivered in step with generation projects. If transmission assets lag behind wind farms, generation capacity cannot be exported efficiently. If wind farms lag behind completed grid infrastructure, expensive transmission assets remain underused.
For Eiffage and Smulders, the award strengthens their position in the European offshore energy construction market. For the wider supply chain, it reinforces the scale of construction work attached to the energy transition, where grid infrastructure is now one of the central delivery challenges.
