(Bloomberg) -- GE Vernova Inc. and the Chantiers de l’Atlantique shipyard won a contract to build a €350 million ($368 million) substation for a wind farm off northern France as the grid works to link up more renewable power.
The equipment, to be installed off Dunkirk harbor, will be made in France, the head of the power-transmission operator said Wednesday. Reseau de Transport d’Electricite said it’s ramping up investment in the grid so it can cope with burgeoning growth in renewables.
Manufacturers of grid equipment need to scale up production capacity to keep pace with demand, RTE President Xavier Piechaczyk told reporters outside Paris. Rising power consumption by high-energy users such as data centers and car-battery makers is straining the supply chain for grid upgrades across Europe.
RTE plans to boost investment by 24% next year to €3.1 billion, and reach more than €6 billion annually in the next decade as it connects up new offshore wind farms and nuclear plants. Capital spending should amount to about €100 billion in total by 2040, Piechaczyk reiterated Wednesday.
“These billions of investments in the grid must lead to new plants or plant enlargement in Europe, and the more in France the better,” he said.
Earlier this year, RTE awarded almost €1 billion of contracts to five European cable makers, and signed a €4.5 billion deal with Hitachi Energy and Chantiers de l’Atlantique to build substations and gears for three other wind projects.
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