Fugro has been awarded two geotechnical investigation contracts for the development of the Dutch Nederwiek wind farm sites 2 and 3 (noord).
The contracts, awarded by the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO), are part of the Dutch Government’s Offshore Wind Energy Roadmap 2030/31, which aims to accelerate the development of offshore wind in the country.
Once completed, the sites will deliver a total installed capacity of approximately 4GW.
The contracts cover a total area of 600 square kilometres and involve the collection of comprehensive seabed and subsurface geodata.
The information will be used by wind farm developers as input for preliminary engineering design studies and future tenders, and will also be available for power cable design, archaeology and marine biology investigations.
Fieldwork is scheduled to start in February 2024 and will be conducted using Fugro’s specialised fleet of geotechnical vessels for seabed testing and downhole drilling.
These ships will be equipped with Fugro’s SEACALF MkV Deepdrive system for seabed cone penetration testing and WISON MkV Ecodrive for downhole sampling and cone penetration testing.
Onboard laboratory capacity will also be increased to ensure faster processing of results.
The subsequent extensive laboratory testing will take place in Fugro’s extended facilities in the UK and Belgium.
RVO’s coordinator soil characterisation Peter-Paul Lebbink said: “With the award of this geotechnical site investigation, RVO will collect another large-scale geotechnical data set, now within the Nederwiek wind farm (noord).
“The investigation area is planned for 4GW of offshore wind, which will be of significant importance for the energy transition in the Netherlands.”
The subsequent phases of further processing, laboratory testing, data analysis, and reporting will continue into 2025.