Dong Energy has signed an agreement with the Jan De Nul Group for the installation of subsea export cables at the Race Bank offshore wind development project in the UK.
Jan De Nul Group has experience within dredging, and has now extended its business into cable installation.
Race Bank offshore wind farm, when operational, will have a capacity of up to 580 megawatts, enough to power over 400,000 UK homes. It will be located almost 17 miles off Blakeney Point on the North Norfolk Coast, and a similar distance from the Lincolnshire coast at Chapel St. Leonards.
Jan De Nul Group will conduct installation (laying and burial) of the subsea export cables from landfall to two offshore platforms and the interlink between the offshore substations. There will be 148 kilometres of subsea cable in total.
The agreement between DONG Energy and Jan De Nul Group was signed at DONG Energy’s exhibition stand at EWEA Offshore 2015, the world’s largest offshore wind energy conference taking place in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Thomas Karst, Programme Director for Race Bank at DONG Energy , said:
“Race Bank is an exciting project with the potential to power over 400,000 UK homes, and it’s great to sign this agreement with Jan De Nul Group for the installation of export cables.
“We are currently progressing with initial construction work for Race Bank, and Jan De Nul Group will play an important role in taking this forward.”
Jan De Nul Group’s offshore director, Noël Pille, said:
“The Race Bank project is just the motivating challenge where Jan De Nul Group will make the difference. It needs the utmost ingenuity in developing new methods and designing innovating specific subsea tools to execute the tasks, respecting the environmental constraints.
“Our engineering department is able to design the project specific vessels and tools, making it possible to develop tailor-made solutions for DONG Energy. With its total turntable capacity of 10,500 tonnes, our new cable installation vessel “Isaac Newton” will challenge the current industry standards for the supply and installation of long length cables.”