Tideway BV, a part of the DEME Group, has laid the first offshore export cable section at the Ørsted’s 1.2GW Hornsea Project One offshore wind farm in the North Sea off the coast of England, UK.
Image: Ocean Yield’s cable lay vessel Connector. Photo: courtesy of Ørsted.
Power generated by the wind farm, which is being built 120km off the Yorkshire Coast, will be supplied to three offshore substations and then to the shore via three high voltage subsea power cables.
As part of a contract awarded earlier, Tideway BV will be responsible for the cable lay of the first section using Ocean Yield’s cable lay vessel Connector.
Scope of the work includes cable installation, engineering, boulder removal, pre-trenching, pulling in cables to substations, crossing installation, offshore jointing and cable burial.
Tideway BV project manager Ken Swaegers said: “This is a very exciting job for us, and an amazing opportunity to work on the biggest construction project in offshore wind. Due to its scale we have several vessels operating at the Site, and over summer, the Connector will be accompanied by our own brand new cable laying vessel Living Stone.
“The Living Stone will be equipped with an innovative dual-lane cable installation system, consisting out of two cable highways – one for laying the cable and one where the next cable can be simultaneously prepared, significantly improving production rates.”
Planned to be commissioned in 2020, the Hornsea Project One project is expected to generate clean power required to power more than one million UK homes.
Hornsea Project One director Duncan Clark said: “We are pleased that Tideway has been able to mobilize the Connector to meet our specific requirements for this project, and we look forward to Living Stone coming to site to help build this remarkable wind farm project.”
The wind project is also expected to create 2,000 jobs during construction phase and 300 additional jobs during its operational phase.