The topside of the offshore substation for the Rentel offshore wind farm has been installed in the Belgian North Sea, Rentel NV, the owner and developer of the 309MW wind farm said.
The 1,100-tonne substation, installed by the heavy lift vessel Rambiz on Friday, 26 January, will collect and export the power generated by the 42 Siemens D7 type wind turbines, each with an individual installed capacity of 7.35MW.
The topside was loaded onto a barge at STX France’s assembly yard in Saint Nazaire and started its journey towards the installation site on 11 January. The installation, initially scheduled for mid-January, was slightly delayed by bad weather.
The foundation for the substation was installed in September 2017.
The wind farm is scheduled to deliver first power to the Belgian grid by mid-2018, with the full commissioning expected by year-end.
Rentel NV is a consortium of eight Belgian shareholders, including Otary Offshore Energy, DEME Group and Elicio NV.
DEME, with its subsidiaries GeoSea and Tideway, is the Engineering, Procurement, Construction and Installation (EPCI) contractor for the wind farm.