Belgium’s Elia Asset N.V. has awarded compatriot G‐tec with a contract to carry out seabed surveying and sea soil sampling on the east coast of Belgium for submarine power cables and an offshore platform which will form part of the proposed Modular Offshore Grid.
Along with the survey design and planning, the work includes marine geophysical and geotechnical surveys along the proposed cable corridor and at the platform’s location.
Furthermore, a bathymetric survey, seabed feature identification, and ferrous object detection (including UXO survey) will be carried out.
Shallow geology and geotechnical surveys to a nominal 10m below the seabed will also be done, as well as seabed material sampling and particle size analysis, imagery, survey reporting, and data delivery including GIS formats.
The Modular Offshore Grid project is aimed at connecting offshore wind farms to a high-voltage substation located on the offshore platform, which will, in turn, be connected to the onshore grid.
One major long-term objective of the offshore power socket is to concentrate all the available electrical capacity at a single point, so that the energy generated offshore can be transmitted to centres of consumption via direct-current infrastructure to be built offshore.
In the long term, the modular grid infrastructure is planned to be connected to an international platform using direct-current connections, in order to transmit greater quantities of power over longer distances.
These resources could be used in the event of there being insufficient wind in the North Sea. The connections will also allow wind power to be stored in dedicated infrastructure when a surplus of energy is generated.