The Weinviertel line is currently one of the largest and most important APG projects for Austria. This line will facilitate the feed-in of the increasing production of wind power in the Weinviertel region in APG’s trans-regional transmission grid, which is thus made available and usable all over Austria. APG invests approximately 200 million euros in the business and residential area of Lower Austria.

The security of supply in the region and of Lower Austria as a whole is sustainably improved with the new line. Through the continuing integration of wind and solar energy from the Weinviertel region it will also play an important role for achieving the goals defined in the Lower Austrian Climate and Energy Strategy 2030 as well as the Austrian climate and energy targets.

The existing APG power line in the Waldviertel region was already more than 70 years old and due to its long operating time in need of renovation. In addition, it was no longer suited to handle the challenges of the future. Therefore it was necessary to develop a new routing for the line which takes into account the geographical development on the production side: the new APG Weinviertel line will run as 380 kV line from Seyring to the substation Zaya, which is being newly built within the scope of the project. At the substation Zaya a new connection to the Lower Austrian 110 kV grid and a 220 kV connection to the Czech border are being established. Mid-2022 both, the new Weinviertel line and the substation Zaya are scheduled to go on line.

With huge steps the construction works of the new Weinviertel line are approaching the finishing line.

“In project unit 1 and 3 all pylons have already been successfully assembled. In project unit 2 the final assembly works will be completed in the next few weeks”, confirms project manager Andreas Pischel. With the section method a pylon is assembled vertically by erecting the bottom section and then lifting and bolting the next section on the first aso. Overall the Weinviertel line will comprise 202 pylons, each of which with a height of approx. 60 meters.

Also the wire stringing works are well under way. This means that the transmission cables are being pulled into position along the route with a cable winch puller. Wherever possible and expedient the auxiliary rope – which is used to pull the actual cable wire through the winch – is being lifted up to the top of the pylon with a helicopter. This is faster and protects the ground along the transmission line route.

Transformers are the heart of each substation. They convert the voltage of APG’s high-voltage grid to the voltages of the regional distribution system operators and vice versa.

Mid-May 2021 the first transformer arrived at its new place of work. Like its colleagues – which were delivered in June and September, respectively – the 300-ton colossus had to travel quite a long way: first, from the Siemens plant in Weiz by train to Hohenau an der March. There it had to be lifted with a special lift frame on a heavy-load vehicle which took it right to its foundations at the substation Zaya, a journey that took several days.