Dutch project engineering company Semco Maritime has signed a two-year contract with with Danish energy company Orsted's Hornsea Project One offshore wind farm - the world’s largest - in the the east coast of England.
Under the two-year agreement, Semco will provide service and maintenance for the reactive compensation station and three offshore substations (OSS) at the 1218MW Hornsea 1 offshore wind farm in the UK.
The service contract runs until the beginning of 2020, and the work will be carried out from Semco Maritime’s office in Grimsby, UK. Semco Maritime’s office in Norddeich, Germany, handles operations on the German Continental shelf, including a similar 5-year service contract with Deutsche Bucht Wind Farm.
“We are pleased that Orsted has chosen us for the job, and we are proud to be able to build on our experience and our successful completion of several offshore substations", says Phaedra Pritchard, Head of Operations Service Wind, Semco Maritime UK.
Semco Maritime has special substation knowledge, as the Danish offshore project and engineering company has designed and built all three substations together with Bladt Industries.
Hornsea One will start supplying power to the grid by 2020. The wind park, located in the North Sea, 120 kilometers off the English coast, covers an area of 207 square kilometers and comprises 174 turbines with a capacity of 7MW each.
While the three substations convert the turbine energy, the RCS – the first of its kind ever installed offshore – is necessary to compensate energy loss due to the long distance from wind farm to the power grid at shore.