Wagenborg Towage confirmed Monday that Jan De Nul had awarded it a contract for transporting 107 monopile foundations for Gode Wind 3 and Borkum Riffgrund 3 offshore wind farms in Germany to Eemshaven.
Assisted by the tug ‘waterlines’, the first transports arrived in Eemshaven under agency of Wagenborg.
In the upcoming months, Wagenborg will perform another 35 voyages with monopiles from Germany and Denmark to the temporary storage in Eemshaven using a specially equipped pontoon (100 × 33 × 7.6 meters).
The ‘WAGENBORG BARGE 8’ has hydraulically operated saddles and an additional internal ballast system to carry three monopiles per voyage.
Wagenborg’s engineers carried out detailed calculations for this method of transport, taking stability, sea conditions and a weight of 1,500 ton per monopile into account, Wagenborg said.
In the summer, Jan De Nul’s recently delivered heavy lift vessel Les Alizés will arrive on site offshore in Germany and install the first monopile foundation offshore.
Les Alizés was delivered by the CMHI Shipyard in China in January 2023 and is sailing to Eemshaven in The Netherlands. Jan De Nul said it had invested in the vessel as a response to the global trend within the offshore wind energy sector to design and install increasingly larger wind turbines.
Les Alizés will be able to load out, transport and install multiple units of the largest and heaviest wind turbine foundations. In addition, as a crane vessel that floats, she will be able to install heavier and larger foundations into deeper waters and in more challenging seabed conditions.
The vessel will mainly be used to construct offshore wind farms, but its crane is also suitable for decommissioning offshore oil and gas platforms.
The 242 MW Gode Wind 3 and 900 MW Borkum Riffgrund 3 wind farms are owned and developed by Danish renewable energy firm Ørsted.
Both wind farms will be built in the German North Sea, starting this summer, with full commercial operation scheduled for late 2024 and early 2025, respectively.