Tideway BV, part of DEME Group, has completed the installation of the export cable at the Hornsea Project One offshore wind farm in the UK.
With the offshore export cables being 467km long, in addition to the onshore cable route of 38km connecting each of the three strings to the national grid, this is the longest AC offshore wind export cable system that has ever been installed, Ørsted said.
Tideway and sub-contractor VBMS installed the three landfall cable sections using the vessel Ndurance, while the remainder of the sections were laid using Ocean Yield’s vessel Connector and later Tideway’s Living Stone .
The cables were manufactured by NKT at its facilities in Cologne, Germany, and Karlskrona, Sweden.
According to the Danish developer, the cable manufacture and installation were completed months ahead of schedule.
Termination and testing are also being completed ahead of schedule and are expected to be finalized within the first months of 2019.
“This record-breaking project is a step up in scale from the offshore wind farms we have today. It will be the first offshore wind farm in the world with a capacity over 1GW, and at 120km out to sea, we are pioneering new technology and really at the forefront of scaling up clean energy infrastructure with each phase we complete,” said Duncan Clark , Programme Director for Hornsea Project One and Two.
“I’d personally like to thank our team including all of the contractors who have enabled us to reach this milestone ahead of schedule. Over 35 vessels were involved in delivering the installation, which was conducted safely and efficiently by all.”
Ørsted is developing the Hornsea Project One some 120km offshore Yorkshire, UK. The 1.2GW wind farm will feature 174 Siemens 7MW turbines, three offshore substations and a Reactive Compensation Station (RCS) .