The first of 69 wind turbines has been installed at the 759 MW Hollandse Kust Noord offshore wind project in the Dutch North Sea.
The offshore wind farm, located some 18.5 kilometres off the coast of Egmond aan Zee in the Netherlands, is developed by CrossWind, a joint venture between Shell and Eneco.
The wind project is expected to generate its first power by the summer and is planned to become fully operational by the end of this year.
The offshore construction started in October 2022, while the last TP-less monopile was placed on the seabed in February this year.
CrossWind’s partners Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy and Van Oord , the balance of plant contractor for the project, use the offshore installation vessel Scyll a to transport and install the turbines.
Scylla sailed out with the first wind turbine from the Eemshaven to the HKN offshore site last week and installed the first Siemens Gamesa’s SG 11.0-200 DD wind turbine on its foundation on 15 April.
The wind turbines have a rotor diameter of 200 metres while one turbine blade is 97 metres long.
“First the tower is installed on the monopile, then the nacelle on top of the tower. Then come the blades, which are usually the most critical lift with respect to weather conditions. Blade installation will commence if there is a sufficiently long-time window of windspeeds below 12 m/s. For comparison, 12 m/s is a windspeed at which it becomes hard to hold an umbrella”, said Stefan Hartman , Wind Turbine Generator Package Manager at CrossWind.
The tower sections for the wind turbines arrived in the Dutch Port of Eemshaven at the beginning of this year.
Once fully completed, HKN will be capable of generating at least 3.3 TWh annually, or enough to meet 2.8 per cent of the total electricity demand in the Netherlands.