Seaway Heavy Lifting (SHL) is set to commence the first pre-lay grapnel run campaign at the Beatrice offshore wind farm site to clear the inter-array cable routes from debris and prepare them for cable installation.
The work will be carried out by the anchor handling vessel Blue Alfa between 28 October and 10 November.
A pre-lay grapnel run will be performed where a new power cable will be protected by jetting, clearing any debris from the route to prevent damage to the jetting tool, or any hindrance to the burial.
The work on the export cables is underway, being performed by Nexans, who is in charge of producing and installing the cables.
So far, SHL’s vessel Stanislav Yudin has installed 82 out of 86 sets of foundation piles for the 588MW Beatrice offshore wind farm. After completing the installation of all the piles, the vessel will re-mobilise for the jacket foundation installation, which is currently suspended as Oleg Strashnov left the site at the beginning of October to work on the Merkur offshore wind farm in Germany.
Beatrice will comprise Siemens 7MW turbines and two Siemens Offshore Transformer Modules (OTMs), all placed on top of jacket foundations.
The first wind turbines are scheduled to be installed in summer 2018, with the wind farm expected to be commissioned by the end of 2019.
Offshore WIND Staff