Van Oord’s heavy-lift installation vessel Svanen has installed the first of 50 monopiles for the Baltic Eagle offshore wind farm in Germany, owned by the Spanish energy company Iberdrola.
The installation strategy for the foundations is based on the feeder concept, which involves floating the foundations to the Svanen at the offshore installation site.
The monopiles, which will carry Vestas 9.5 MW wind turbines , are being transported to the construction site some 30 kilometres northeast of the German island of Rügen from EEW in Rostock, Germany.
Once they arrived, the heavy-lift vessel lifts them upright. The steel piles with a diameter of between 8.75 metres and 9 metres and a length of between 75 and 90 are then driven into the seabed.
Van Oord already started transportation of the transition pieces from the Avilés Port in Spain to the Van Oord site at the Mukran Port in Germany beginning of March.
The transition pieces, manufactured by Windar Renovables, are scheduled to be installed in the second quarter of 2023.
Later this year, Van Oord’s cable-laying vessel Nexus and trencher Dig-It will be deployed to install and bury the inter-array cables.
“We are pleased to be working with many experienced and professional partners on such a complex offshore project – such as EEW SPC, Windar and VanOord in this respect. We are fully on schedule with the construction of Baltic Eagle and continue to be a reliable partner for the decarbonization of the German industry with the expansion of the Baltic Hub to approximately 826 MW by the end of next year”, said Iris Stempfle , Managing Director of Iberdrola Renovables Germany.
With a production capacity of 476 MW, Iberdrola’s Baltic Eagle offshore wind farm is expected to supply about 475,000 homes with renewable energy while reducing CO2 emissions by approximately 800,000 tonnes per year.
The offshore wind farm is scheduled to be fully operational by 2024.
Baltic Eagle is the second of Iberdrola’s three large-scale projects in Germany, along with the 350 MW Wikinger and the 300 MW Windanker offshore wind farms.
Collectively, these wind projects form Iberdrola’s so-called Baltic Hub, which will have a total capacity of more than 1.1 GW by 2026 and trigger an investment sum of about EUR 3.7 billion.