TenneT is preparing for the sail away of the Borssele Beta substation topside that will export power from the Blauwind consortium’s over 731MW Borssele 3&4 project off the Netherlands.
The 3650-tonne topside will sail from HSM Offshore’s Schiedam yard on 22 March, towards the wind farm where it will be installed by crane vessel Seaway Strashnov.
Tennet said the unit will be fully commissioned by 1 September.
“With this platform, the offshore grid that TenneT is building in the Dutch North Sea is definitively taking shape,” TenneT director of offshore projects Marco Kuijpers said.
Borssele Beta is the second offshore grid connection built by TenneT. Over the coming eight years we will build a new offshore connection every year.”
The platform will be installed onto a jacket foundation installed by Seaway 7 last year.
TenneT said the Borssele Beta platform is equipped with radar and various ecological and meteorological monitoring systems as part of a data collection project.
The project will collect unique and detailed information along the entire Dutch coastal area that will help inform future offshore wind development.
“The construction of the Dutch wind farms in the North Sea is well on track,” said director general of climate and energy at the Dutch ministry of economic affairs and climate policy, Sandor Gaastra.
“This is in part due to the coordinated construction of an offshore electricity grid by TenneT. The second ‘offshore power socket’ will transport approximately 2.5% of the electricity used in the Netherlands from the wind farm to the mainland,” he added.