Germany's EEW Special Pipe Constructions ( EEW SPC) has signed a contract with offshore installation firm Van Oord to manufacture 100 monopile foundations for RWE’s Sofia offshore wind farm, to be located in the UK North Sea.
The Sofia Offshore Wind Farm will be one of the largest single offshore wind farms in the world, with its 1.4 gigawatt (GW) capacity.
The wind farm will comprise 100 14-MW offshore wind turbines by Siemens Gamesa that will be sited on Dogger Bank in the central North Sea, some 195 kilometers from the UK’s north east coast. Now under construction, the project is 100% owned by RWE.
"After several successful projects for Van Oord such as Gemini, Deutsche Bucht and Fryslân, we are pleased to have again been selected as supplier for this excellent European project," says Robert Dreves, Managing Director at EEW SPC.
The monopiles will be built in Rostock, Germany. They will have a diameter of up to 8.8 meters and a length of up to 91.8 meters, for which EEW SPC will process approximately 130,000 metric tons of steel. Production at the Rostock site is scheduled to begin in June 2023.
Van Oord will deploy the offshore installation vessel Aeolus to install the 100 extended monopile foundations without transition pieces.
The Dutch company will also install the 350 kilometers of array cables at the wind farm, using the cable-laying vessel Nexus.
After commissioning, Sofia will generate enough electricity for the equivalent of up to 1.2 million UK households.