Boskalis Wraps Up Its Part of Moray West Work, Orion and Apollo Continue Foundation Installation

Wind Farm Update

March 18, 2024, by Adrijana Buljan

Boskalis has completed the work the company was contracted to perform on the Moray West offshore wind farm. While the Dutch offshore construction company has now wrapped up its part of the job, work on Ocean Winds’ 882 MW project offshore Scotland continues with the installation of foundations and inter-array cables underway.

Boskalis says that over the past two years, the company deployed “no less than six Boskalis vessels” for the Moray West offshore wind project.

“Our Gardline colleagues carried out extensive geotechnical and geophysical survey works before the installation work. In later phases, our subsea rock installation vessel Rockpiper installed more than 110,000 tons of rock as scour protection for the 62 XXL monopiles and our semi-submersible heavy transport vessel White Marlin transported two times eight foundations from Asia to the port of Invergordon, Scotland,” the company said via social media on 18 March.

After transporting the foundations to Scotland, Boskalis’s crane vessel Bokalift 2 was deployed to install them at the Moray West site using vibro-driving and hydraulic impact driving, with the first monopiles in place in October 2023. A couple of months later, the company’s crane vessel Bokalift 1 installed the wind farm’s two offshore substation platforms.

The work followed Boskalis signing a contract with Ocean Winds in February 2023.

At Moray West, the installation of foundations continues with DEME’s vessels Orion and Apollo carrying out the work, with Orion installing the monopiles and Apollo the transition pieces (TPs). According to the latest Notice of Operations from the Moray West project team, 16 monopiles and 50 TPs are left to be installed.

DEME won the contract for the installation of monopile foundations and transition pieces at Moray West in 2022. The company’s scope of work also includes the bolting and grouting of the monopile/transition piece connections.

Inter-array cable installation is also underway at Moray West, with Seaway Aimery supported by the Olympic Orion doing the work. The vessels Olympic Orion and Seaway Aimery arrived on site on 12 and 14 March, respectively, and are expected to be deployed there for approximately three months.

Offshore export cables were laid and trenched by 29 February, according to the weekly notice from Moray West. As reported earlier this month, the cable supplier Nexans completed the offshore export cable pull-ins for both offshore substation platforms at the 882 MW Moray West.

Jan De Nul’s fall pipe vessel (FPV) Simon Stevin arrived at the project site on 26 February and started remedial protection works over the offshore export cable routes, which is expected to be completed by 23 March.

The 882 MW Moray West offshore wind farm, located in the Moray Firth, approximately 22.5 kilometres from the Caithness coastline, will comprise 60 Siemens Gamesa 14.7 MW wind turbines. The offshore wind farm is scheduled to generate its first power this year and to be fully operational in 2025.