Northland Power has reached financial close on a demonstration project that will see two MHI Vestas V164-8.4MW turbines installed on mono bucket foundations at the Deutsche Bucht offshore wind farm off the coast of Germany.
The pilot project will raise the total capacity at DeBu to 268.8MW from 252MW.
Fred Olsen subsidiary Universal Foundation has designed the foundations, with Sif and Harland & Wolff subcontracted to assist with construction.
Van Oord is installation and EPCI contractor for the project.
Installation of the mono buckets is expected to start in the second quarter of 2019, with commissioning of the whole wind farm scheduled for the latter half of the same year.
The foundations will consist of a single steel cylinder, known as a suction bucket, that uses its own weight and vacuum pressure to embed on the sea floor.
“This method eliminates the need for pile driving, and, consequently, for noise mitigation measures such as big bubble curtains,” the developers said.
The mono buckets will have a height of about 61 metres and weigh 1100 tonnes.
The demo was granted a permit in May from the Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency of Germany.
Northland Power chief executive John Brace said: “Today’s announcement represents yet another first for Northland Power. The addition of the demo turbines is not only innovative and accretive to the base project, but we are able to undertake this initiative with little additional risk since they will be integrated into the overall construction project.
“The innovative new mono bucket design could be of significant benefit to some of Northland’s future offshore wind farms. The learnings from this pilot could allow Northland to construct faster and lower costs for certain site conditions.”
Universal Foundation managing director Kristian Ravn said: “This pilot provides a unique opportunity to utilise the mono bucket foundation in a commercial project, demonstrating the above state of the art technology’s low impact on marine habitats. The support from Northland Power has been second to none.
“All of the parties involved have invested a lot of effort into making this project a reality, and we are delighted that it will now move forward.”
Image: MHI Vestas
DeBu flush for mono bucket demo
By EBS