The jacket foundation for the Hollandse Kust West Beta substation has left the Smulders yard in Vlissingen, the Netherlands, and is now being transported to the offshore wind farm site, approximately 53 kilometres off the coast of Egmond aan Zee.
On 16 May, the 49-metres-high jacket left the yard in Vlissingen, after Smulders completed the loadout of the structure and the piles at the beginning of the month.
With a total weight of 900 tonnes and a length of up to 79 metres, the piles will be used to anchor the jacket to the seabed.
Once on site, Heerema Marine Contractors’ lifting vessel Sleipnir will hoist the structure and place it on the seabed.
Next year, the substation topside for the Hollandse Kust West Beta, which is currently under construction at the Equans yard in Hoboken, Belgium, will be installed on the approximately 2,300-tonne jacket.
At the beginning of 2022, the Dutch-German transmission system operator (TSO) TenneT awarded a consortium comprising Boskalis and Orient Cable (NBO) a contract for the Hollandse Kust West Beta export cable , which will connect the 700 MW offshore platform to TenneT’s onshore grid in the Netherlands.
The link between the offshore cables for the wind farm Hollandse Kust West Beta and the transformer station in Wijk aan Zee will be installed by the NRG consortium of Denys, Alsema, and Van Vulpen under a contract signed with TenneT in May 2022.
Hollandse Kust West Beta is the third and final offshore substation Smulders and Equans are constructing for TenneT.
The joint venture has already delivered the Hollandse Kust Noord platform, which was installed in October 2022, while the Hollandse Kust West Alpha platform was installed at its site some 50 kilometres off the coast of Egmond aan Zee a year later.