This summer I had the opportunity to visit Siemens Energy office in Manchester. The tour was organised by the IEEE PES Student Branch at the University of Manchester and Lois Efe, who put a lot of effort into introducing students and researchers to this industrial facility. The visit was very informative – I did not expect that Siemens Energy has so many large-scale projects. In a nutshell, Siemens Energy’s main business today is designing and building offshore wind farms. And they are building a lot of them! Here are some notes from the visit:
- The average capacity of installed wind turbines ranges between 3 MW and 10 MW.
- Each project includes 60-180 wind turbines.
- Multiple projects are being designed at the same time for European and UK clients.
- Each project takes years to complete. The development and testing of control and protection systems for wind farms alone takes 12-18 months.
- The project pipeline of Siemens Energy is already planned until 2050!
These numbers are mind-blowing. The demand for building offshore wind farms is so high that Siemens Energy has projects scheduled for the next 16 years. Note that designing and constructing such farms is a highly complex engineering task. It is not enough to build and install wind turbines, platforms, and cables. There are numerous other problems to solve, such as converting power between AC and DC, dealing with harmonics, reactive power and voltage issues. All of that requires thoughtful designing and testing. Each of Siemens Energy’s projects has around 5,000 certificates confirming that the equipment is well-tested and complies with the requirements and standards. A massive amount of engineering work!
Here are some photos from the visit:
The office is proud of the offshore platforms 
Peculiar awards
Andrey Churkin (Андрей Чуркин) 2023
