The first part of the foundation installation for the Gode Wind Offshore Wind Farm in the German North Sea is completed.
Just two months after the first pile, GeoSea has installed all 42 positions for Gode Wind 2 and already 6 monopiles for Gode Wind 1.
Using a combination of the IHC IQIP Hydrohammer S-3000 and newly developed NMS-8000 together with a big bubble curtain, all piles have been realized on time and well within the strict German underwater noise legislation for this DONG Energy project.
Gode Wind will be Germany’s largest offshore wind farm and is located 45 kilometres from the mainland and around 33 kilometres from the islands of Juist and Norderney. The monopiles used for the foundation have a diameter of 7.5 metres. The biggest monopile installed is 67 metres long and weighs well over 900 tonnes, making it the biggest and heaviest monopile ever installed in the German North Sea.
The Netherlands-based IHC IQIP, a Royal IHC company, has provided piling, handling and noise mitigation equipment to offshore marine constructors GeoSea for the Gode Wind project. The two companies already worked together at DONG Energy’s recently completed Borkum Riffgrund 1.
“We were thrilled to be appointed by GeoSea to work alongside them on the Gode Wind 02 and 01 project. This gave us the chance to further stretch the limits on pile installation”, says Jan Albert Westerbeek, executive director of IHC IQIP . “Our joined history has definitely been a key factor in completing the first phase of this project safely and within the scheduled time frame.”
When fully operational the offshore wind farm will have a capacity of 582MW, enough to power some 600,000 German households.