Northland Deutsche Bucht has completed the installation of all 31 foundations for its offshore wind farm project in the North Sea.
The Canadian power producer of Northland Power's third offshore wind farm which is about 95 kilometres to the northwet of the North Sea island of Borkum in Germany’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), pointed out that this successfully concludes the first phase of construction within the planned timeframe.
Jens Poulsen, Project Director of Northland Deutsche Bucht GmbH, says: “Installation work on the construction site, which is more than 100 kilometers off the coast, is a real challenge in the winter months. But thanks to the flexible and efficient work of our project team and our contract partners, we were able to install all foundations safely and on schedule.”
The next construction phase, inter-array medium-voltage cabling, is set to start this spring.
Reloading of the foundations onto the installation vessel Scylla at the offshore base port in Cuxhaven went off without a hitch. The monopiles, measuring an average of 78 metres in length, were delivered from Rostock as needed and loaded directly onto the installation vessel.
The transition pieces, which measure 26 meters in height and serve as connecting elements to the 8.4 MW wind turbine, were transported to Cuxhaven from their production location in Spain by heavy lift vessel.
They were offloaded for interim storage in Cuxhaven until installation.
Further, two Mono Bucket foundations are to be erected in addition to the 31 monopiles during the second quarter of this year. Deutsche Bucht is the first offshore wind farm worldwide to test this innovative foundation under commercial operating conditions.
After its completion, the 269 MW offshore wind farm is expected to produce 1.1 billion kilowatthours annually, which will serve the energy needs of approximately 328,000 households.