Shell and Eneco Back at Sif for More Transition Piece-Less Monopiles

Foundations

December 21, 2023, by Adnan Durakovic

Ecowende and Sif Holding will collaborate on the construction of Ecowende’s offshore wind farm Hollandse Kust West site VI, located about 53 kilometres off the Dutch coast, near IJmuiden.

The collaboration for this project between the offshore wind farm developer, a joint venture of Shell and Eneco, and Sif Holding dates to February 2023 when Sif announced having taken a final investment decision on the expansion of its manufacturing facilities in Rotterdam.

At that occasion Ecowende, as a launching client for the expanded factory, committed to participate in its financing through an Advance Factory Payment. The project was already in Sif’s order book for 70 kilotonnes but with the signature of the final contract is now firm for production in 2025.

Sif will be responsible for the manufacturing of the 52 extended monopile foundations that will have no transition pieces, but secondary steel components, and that will have a total weight of approximately 70 kilotonnes.

Transition piece-less monopiles were successfully applied by Sif in earlier projects offshore the Netherlands, including the Hollandse Kust Noord project for Crosswind, another joint venture of Shell and Eneco.

In this transition piece-less design, the secondary steel components like boat-landings, ladders, main access platforms, and internal platforms will be connected to the monopile foundations once these are installed at sea. The secondary steel components will also be delivered by Sif in the same contract.

Ecowende, together with partners such as Sif, intends to set a new ecological standard for building and operating wind farms in the North Sea, with minimal impact on the natural habitat of birds, bats and marine mammals, and with a thriving underwater world.

Folkert Visser, CEO and Project Director Ecowende, said: ”Building a wind farm in harmony with nature is an important condition for eventually achieving the ambition of 70 GW of offshore wind energy by 2050, within the ecological limits of the North Sea. Ecowende will implement various innovations and larger-scale measures to mitigate the negative effects of the wind farm on the local ecology and to stimulate positive effects. For Sif, this implies for example that the monopiles are designed for low noise installation methods and that they can support various wildlife detection and monitoring devices, above and below the water line.”