Over the summer, several hands contributed to put Siemens’ service operation vessels (SOVs) into shape. The first SOV hull has been built at the Cemre shipyard in Turkey. It arrived at the Havyard shipyard in Norway in August – its final building site. Soon, the first SOV will be ready for docking out and first sea trials.
Meanwhile the second SOV hull was launched in Turkey at the end of September, and then began the towing operation to Norway. If everything goes according to plan, the two vessels will leave Norway early next year and become operational at the Baltic II and Butendiek offshore wind farms in Germany.
With the growing number of large scale offshore wind farms, the need grows for purpose built service vessels. Just two months ago, Siemens’ customer Vattenfall decided to go for a combined service concept for their projects Sandbank and DanTysk in the German North Sea. The projects lie only 20 kilometers away. Service will center on a new SOV that will take up position between the two wind farms. A helicopter will provide additional deployment readiness to enable crew to be ferried between land, the SOV and the wind turbines, irrespective of weather and sea conditions.
Another SOV is in the pipeline for Gemini, the largest Dutch offshore project owned by the Gemini consortium. Over 15 years, an SOV in combination with a helicopter will be based at the wind farm.
Source: Siemens