The impact on offshore wind development of increasing lead times of HV components

The lead time for the supply of key HV components for offshore wind transmission systems has increased substantially recently. For example, offshore fixed shunt reactors, which are critical components for compensating for long AC cables, now have a lead time of up to 48 months. European power transformers have lead times of up to 44 months, and STATCOMs have lead times of up to around 2 years. Some sizes of key equipment drive the long lead times so, for example very large offshore fixed shunt reactors have longer lead times than the smaller variants.