OFFSHORE WIND POWER Ӏ ENERGY
Sofia Offshore Wind Farm, one of the largest offshore wind projects in the world, will have enough capacity to power 1.2 million average UK homes. The divide between onshore-
Durham Lifting is set to work in the North Sea
and offshore is far from absolute though. Onshore lifting companies, great and small, are seeing opportunities at sea and are wanting to join in. Thus Durham Lifting, a hitherto land-oriented crane hire and services company usefully based on the North Sea coast, in April this year obtained a ‘Fit for Offshore Renewables’ (F4OR) accreditation status. F4OR is a programme designed to prepare the UK supply chain to enter and work in the offshore renewable energy sector. The programme does not require participants to have offshore experience but does require them, in its own worlds “to have identified offshore renewable energy as a strategic opportunity for growth.”
Delivering on these expectations though is challenged by the sharp increase in water depths close to the Japanese coastline, which limits areas suitable for sea-bed turbines. Maximising the energy output, therefore, requires large wind turbines – the installation of which in turn calls for large Wind Turbine Installation Vessels (WTIVs). With most such vessels tied up with duties in European waters, Japan has an urgent need for high performance WTIVs, purpose-built to do the job. One such vessel is Van Oord’s giant new vessel Boreas, which was launched in May this year at the Yantai CIMC Raffles Offshore shipyard in China and is currently fitting out (see box). It will be commercially available from 2025 – though it will not initially
ply Asian waters. Also in May Van Oord was awarded the contract for the transport and installation of the monopile foundations for the 1.6 GW Nordseecluster offshore wind project in the German sector of the North Sea, and this will be the first project for the Boreas. 44 Nordseecluster monopiles are planned for installation in 2025 and the remaining 60 monopiles by 2027. Nordseecluster is far from Van
Oord’s only North Sea operation, of course. In May Van the company’s offshore installation vessel Aeolus installed the first monopile foundation at the 1.4GW Sofia Offshore Wind Farm on the Dogger Bank 195km off England’s east coast. In the coming months, Van Oord will install a total of 100 monopile foundations. The 1.4 GW
CRANES TODAY 31
DOCKSIDE DEVELOPMENTS Dockyard installations, and the companies that operate them, also span both sectors. Seas offer space for movement
Sarens’ Liebherr LR12500 crawler
of large components; but those components have to make
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