French cable specialist Nexans, in partership with Siemens, will deliver the grid connection for the Beatrice offshore wind farm, situated in the Outer Moray Firth offshore Scotland.
Nexans will be responsible for design, supply and installation of the export cable, both offshore and onshore. The company will manufacture and deliver two circuits of 90 km, with a total of 260 km of onshore and offshore cables.
The offshore cables will be laid by Nexans’ cable laying ship, C/S Nexans Skagerrak and trenched for seabed protection by Nexans’ Capjet system.
According to Nexans, the delivery of the cables will begin in summer 2016 with installation starting in autumn 2017.
For the grid access solution, Siemens said it will deliver two offshore transformer modules (OTM). The OTMs will be linked together to provide the required transmission capacity. The grid access solution will be project managed and engineered from the Siemens Energy Management Renewable Energy Engineering Centre in Manchester, UK.
In addition, Siemens is to supply, install and commission 84 wind turbines for the Beatrice project.
The Beatrice Offshore Windfarm Ltd. (BOWL), is a partnership formed between SSE (40 %), Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (35 %) and SDIC Power (25 %).
The wind farm is being developed with a tier 1 supply chain comprising Seaway Heavy Lifting, Subsea 7, Nexans and Siemens and is expected to deliver approximately £680 million into the UK and Scottish economy via employment and supply chain opportunities during the construction phase and about £400 million – £525 million during the wind farm’s 25 year operational life.
Subsea World News Staff