Jan De Nul Group’s heavy-lift vessel Les Alizés (pictured) has installed the first of 83 monopile foundations at Orsted’s 913MW Borkum Riffgrund 3 offshore wind farm in Germany.
The foundations are up to 100 metres long and weigh up to 1,500 tonnes.
They are manufactured by Steelwind in Nordenham and at Bladt Industries’ Lindø plant in Denmark.
Next year, a new generation of turbines, the SG 11.0-200 DD offshore wind turbine, will be installed on these foundations.
This installation campaign started immediately after the last monopile foundation for the 253MW Gode Wind 3 project was installed.
In total, Les Alizés put 24 monopiles in place for the future turbines, including one monopile and topside of the offshore substation.
Peter De Pooter, manager offshore renewables at Jan De Nul Group, said: “Our heavy-lift vessel, Les Alizés, has proven during the installation of the Gode Wind 3 foundations that she can handle the ever-larger monopile foundations for offshore wind farms. We look forward to continue working with Orsted on Germany’s largest offshore wind farm to date.”
Jörg Kubitza, managing director of Orsted in Germany, added: “With Borkum Riffgrund 3, we are setting new standards for our industry – both in terms of capacity and business model.
“The new project is the first offshore wind farm in Germany to be built that was awarded with a bid of €0 per MWh in the offshore wind tenders.
“This enables us to directly support our corporate customers with their decarbonization. This is only possible on this scale using renewable energies through offshore wind energy.”
Borkum Riffgrund 3 is the first Orsted wind farm in Germany to be built without an offshore substation (OSS).
The new connection concept, which is being implemented together with transmission system operator TenneT, provides a direct connection of the wind turbines via 66 kV export cables to the DolWin5 offshore converter platform from TenneT.
Together with Gode Wind 3, Borkum Riffgrund 3 will have a total capacity of more than 1.1GW.
This almost doubles Orsted’s installed offshore wind power capacity in Germany to around 2.5GW. The two wind farms are expected to be commissioned in 2024 and 2025 respectively.