Van Oord has started work on the burial of export cables at TenneT’s 1500MW Hollandse Kust Zuid offshore grid to connect with neighbouring wind farms.
Four cables will have to be buried more than 5.5m into the North Sea seabed in order to cross the busy shipping route Rotterdam Maasmond.
The installation work started on 22 September by pulling the cable ashore.
The cable was pulled ashore via a direct drill to the new transformer substation that is being built on the Maasvlakte.
From this point, the 42km-long cable to Hollandse Kust (zuid) will be laid by Van Oord and Hellenic Cables.
A Deep Dig-It trencher crossed the Rotterdam Maasmond successfully and is now on its way to the recently installed offshore Alpha jacket in the Hollandse Kust (zuid) wind farm area.
Van Oord’s Deep Dig-It drives unmanned over the seabed and creates a deep trench for the cables by liquefying the seabed.
At the same time, the trencher inserts the cables into the trench and seals them again into the seabed.
The Van Oord/Hellenic Cable Consortium will be installing 4 subsea 220 kV AC cables that will connect 2 offshore platforms to the onshore electricity grid.
The first 2 cables to the Alpha platform will be installed this year. The other 2 cables, meant for the Beta platform, will follow in 2021.