ABO Wind : largest substation is located in Finland

• 126 MVA substation connects 24 turbines to the grid
• The control center was built inside a factory during cold winter months and transported to the construction site
• Välikangas wind farm produces enough electricity to meet the needs of around 90,000 households

(Wiesbaden/Välikangas, 25 May 2021) ABO Wind has managed the construction of a 126 megavolt ampere (MVA) substation in Välikangas, Finland, on behalf of Luxcara, a leading European asset manager for investments in renewable energies. The Välikangas transformer station is the most powerful substation the Wiesbaden-based company has ever built. It ensures that the environmentally friendly electricity produced by 24 Vestas V150 wind turbines, each with an output of 4.3 megawatts, is fed into the grid. The wind farm's production can supply 90,000 households with electricity and save more than 200,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide annually. 'We are able to build suitable substations quickly and efficiently even for very large wind farms and we are very pleased about this,' says Aapo Koivuniemi, Managing Director of the Finnish subsidiary ABO Wind Oy.

The substation is located in the municipality of Haapajärvi, in the centre of Finland. Four transformers each with a capacity of 25/31.5 MVA, have been supplied and installed by Hitachi ABB Powergrids. They convert the voltage of the energy produced in the wind farm from 33 kilovolts to 110 kilovolts before the electricity is fed into the grid of the operator Elenia.

'More than one-fifth of Finland's wind power is connected to Elenia's electricity network, and the connection to the Välikangas wind farm will be the highest capacity connection in our network. We have already cooperated with ABO Wind before and our cooperation is going very well. Our aim is to enable the increase of renewable energy in our network and in this way contribute to the fight against climate change' says Elenia´s Key Account Manager Lasse Sarhela.

The severe Finnish winters make outdoor work challenging. During construction the ambient temperature fell below -30° Celsius. Therefore, the substation's control centre was built in a factory to speed up construction. In spring, a truck transported the finished building to the construction site, where it was placed on the foundation. 'We are right on schedule and expect the wind farm to feed electricity into the grid via the substation during this summer,' says Koivuniemi.

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