The last eight transition pieces (TPs) for the Merkur offshore wind farm have been loaded onto the RollDock Sea vessel and are now ready to sail out to Eemshaven, according to Roll Group’s social media pages.
The company has been transporting the TPs from Aviles, Spain, to the Buss Orange Blue Terminal in the Dutch Eemshaven port since October 2017 . A2Sea’s jack-up vessel Sea Challenger began installing the structures at the site 45km north of the German island of Borkum the following month.
RollDock recently stated that the project was a major challenge as the components had caused the cargo weight, the lifting capacity of one crane and the available dock to be used to the maximum.
All the Merkur transition pieces, produced by the Idesa-Windar joint venture, will have been transported in a verticalized manner due to a weight of 330 metric tons and a height of 27.9 meters.
At the beginning of March 2018, the first of the total of 66 GE Haliade 150-6MW wind turbines was installed at the offshore wind farm site in the German North Sea. The 396MW project is scheduled to be fully operational in 2019.