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Wind turbines in the North Sea
Photo: Kurt Desplenter / BELGA / dpa / picture alliance
The strong influence of Chinese state-owned companies on the energy infrastructure in Germany is met with criticism.
Specifically, it is a consortium with two subsidiaries of the Chinese state-owned company State Grid Corporation of China (SGCC), which was recently awarded the contract for the offshore grid connection platform Borwin 6 off the North Sea island of Borkum.
The system converts electricity from wind farms at sea into direct current and is expected to supply around 1.2 million households with electricity from 2027 onwards.
While the US company McDermott is responsible for the platform construction, the converters, including electrical and computer technology, are manufactured by the SGCC companies in China.
Formally, the 980 megawatt system may not yet fall under the IT security laws that were recently tightened to protect the 5G network from Chinese suppliers.
"It is negligent not to take systems like Borwin into account and make yourself vulnerable," says Holger Berens, CEO of the Federal Association for the Protection of Critical Infrastructures.
"Such transformers can be monitored, intentionally overloaded or switched off." For reasons of confidentiality, the Federal Ministry of Economics does not want to comment specifically.
However, the Federal Network Agency will determine critical components in the energy sector by May 2023.
China and Russia have just announced that they will intensify their military cooperation.
Russia is suspected of wanting to sabotage undersea cables and is said to be responsible for a cyber attack on 5,800 wind turbines made by a German manufacturer in February.
Tennet, the network operator responsible for Borwin 6, explains that the tender was carried out in accordance with EU procurement law, and that ministries are not intended to be involved.
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