Activities are in progress on the 100km export cable route for the 600MW Gemini wind farm project, located 85km from the coast of Groningen.
Gemini will have 2 export cables that will connect two offshore substations to the eventual land fall at the Dutch port of Eemshaven. Despite delays caused by the weather the Fugro / Van Oord Wave Walker 1 is making good progress near the German island of Borkum.
This unique 8-legged walking jack-up has a drilling unit on board to perform two horizontal directional drillings under the existing NorNed cables that connect the Norwegian and Dutch grids. The Wave Walker 1 is able to % walk’ over from the east cable pipe to the west cable pipe, about 15m away from each other, without using tugs. The operations started in September after the ‘closed season’ to avoid disturbance to seasonal activities of the fish and mammals in the vicinity.
Van Oord Offshore Wind Projects, the EPCI contractor for Gemini, recently contracted Swire Blue Ocean A/S to supply one of their offshore installation vessels to join their own offshore installation vessel Aeolus in performing the foundation and turbine installation work. Gemini will have 150 Siemens 4MW turbines installed. The first installation activities are expected to start in 2015. Gemini is a project by Northland Power (60%), Siemens (20%), Van Oord (10%) and HVC (10%).