Berlin/Bayreuth. NordLink has also won awards in the field of communication. In Berlin, the "green cable" for the exchange of German wind energy with Norwegian hydropower has now been honoured with the "PR Report Award" of the communications journal PR Report. The media staging of the opening ceremony of NordLink was honoured as outstanding communication in the category "Technology and Innovation". The press department of the transmission system operator TenneT had created a media event that set new standards for digital and hybrid events, the jury said in its laudation.
With a joint "digital push of a button", German Chancellor Dr Angela Merkel and Norway's Prime Minister Erna Solberg, together with TenneT CEO Manon van Beek, had officially commissioned NordLink in May 2021. The Chancellor emphasised: "NordLink is a milestone for sustainable energy supply and climate protection in Europe."
Simultaneously live-digital present and integrated into the push-button photo moment were also Federal Minister of Economics and Technology Peter Altmaier, the Minister President of Schleswig-Holstein, Daniel Günther, Markus Scheer, Member of the Management Board of KfW IPEX-Bank, Hilde Tonne, CEO of the Norwegian transmission system operator Statnett, Jon Fredrik Baksaas, Chairman of the Board of Statnett, as well as Norway's Minister of Energy Tina Bru.
Since the Corona pandemic made a joint analogue presence event impossible, TenneT's press department had completely redesigned the event schedule. The result was an impressive digital-hybrid live event that created a shared experience that went far beyond a mere push-button moment and dominated the international headlines. It was produced simultaneously in two studios in Berlin and Oslo and implemented with nine parallel live feeds from six different locations, including the Federal Chancellery, the Federal Ministry of Economics and the Kiel State Chancellery.
TenneT's communication concept was developed in close cooperation with Public Dialogue Consultants from the Berlin agency navos and the Stuttgart event agency Tailormade. The opening ceremony, which was honoured in Berlin, exceeded all expectations internally among the NordLink project partners as well as among all external stakeholders and the media: NordLink's commissioning was not only on the front pages of all major newspapers and prime-time news in both Germany and Norway. Several TV and online stations in Germany and Norway had even broadcast the event live, and various international media also reported extensively.
The awards for the communication industry PR Report Award 2021 were selected by an independent 37-member jury from 350 entries. The panel, chaired by PR Report Editor-in-Chief Daniel Neuen, had evaluated the submissions in a two-stage process and voted in secret at a joint meeting in Berlin.
Background to NordLink
NordLink serves the exchange of German wind energy with Norwegian hydropower and is the connection of two optimally complementary systems. The "green cable" has a capacity of 1,400 megawatts and can supply more than 3.6 million German households with renewable energy. This is comparable to the feed-in capacity of 466 wind turbines of three megawatts each. The capacity of this interconnector is equivalent to that of a very large conventional power plant.
NordLink is a high voltage direct current motorway without an exit, i.e. a point-to-point connection, between the AC grids in Germany and Norway. Due to the length of the route and the large transmission power, direct current is used for low-loss transmission. The two cables (positive and negative pole) are connected to the converter stations at each end. The converter stations were built in Wilster (Schleswig-Holstein) and Tonstad (southern Norway). At these locations, the electricity is converted from DC to AC (or vice versa, depending on the direction of transmission) and fed into the German or Norwegian AC transmission grid to supply households and businesses with green electricity.
NordLink was realised by a consortium in which the Norwegian transmission system operator Statnett and DC Nordseekabel GmbH & Co. KG each hold a 50% stake. TenneT and KfW each hold 50 percent of the shares in DC Nordseekabel.
Link to the video of the opening ceremony and to further NordLink information:
