BigLift’s cargo ship Happy Star brought the first eleven transition pieces for the Deutsche Bucht (DeBu) offshore wind farm to the Cuxhaven port in Germany on 14 July, after loading them three days earlier in the Port of Avilés, Asturias, Spain.
The transition pieces for the 252MW wind farm have been fabricated by a joint venture of two Daniel Alonso Group companies, Windar Renovables and Idesa, in their fabrication yards in Avilés.
Each of the transition pieces weighs over 300 tonnes, measures 29 meters in height and has an outside diameter of approximately 6.8 metres.
Happy Star will make a total of three trips from Avilés to Cuxhaven to transport the 31 transition pieces to the marshalling harbour. Once the offshore construction starts this summer, Van Oord’s installation vessel will pick them up at the German port and install them at the offshore site located more than 100 kilometres from the coast.
Van Oord is the Balance of Plant (BoP) contractor for the Deutsche Bucht project, and is in charge of the design, engineering, procurement, construction and installation of the foundations, inter-array cables and an offshore substation, as well as the transportation of the 31 MHI Vestas 8MW wind turbines.
As reported earlier, Van Oord was expected to use its newly-upgraded vessel Aeolus for the installation works at Deutsche Bucht. Currently, the vessel is deployed on Belgian Norther offshore wind farm and is about to start installing the first of the total 44 foundations there shortly.
The company has just boosted its fleet of wind farm installation vessels, as it signed an agreement with Vroon Group to acquire MPI Offshore and the vessels and crew of the MPI Adventure and MPI Resolution.