WINDFARM UPDATES: Borssele I and II, Eneco Luchterduinen & Albatros

Borssele I and II

The Dutch Minister of Economic Affairs presented a road map to the parliament in September 2014 aimed at increasing the offshore wind capacity to 4,500MW. This new approach is presented in the Offshore Wind Energy Law which was sent to the parliament on 17 October and is expected to become law in July 201 5.

In the new strategy the Dutch Governmentis responsible for designating zones with sites that can be tendered. These sites already have a permit, an exploitation subsidy and a grid connection to the main land. Three zones have been designated.

The 1,400MW Borssele Wind Farm Zone, located at the southern border of the Dutch EEZ and 0.5km from the Belgium EEZ is the first of 3 designated zones that will be developed. The development will be made in 2 phases, each of 700MW. The first phase consists of 2 sites, Borssele I (63km2) and II (68 km2), which will start this year.

The Project and Site description for this wind farm zone was published on 24 December 2014 by the Netherlands Enterprise Agency. The document is intended to provide interested parties with information on the wind farm zone and the progress leading up to the first tender which will open in Q3 later this year.

As part of the new strategy the Government is now also responsible for investigations of the physical environment of the wind farm site. Desk studies have already been carried out. The next step is the Geophysical Campaign which should provide geophysical data that can be used as input for the (FEED) design process to be carried out by the tendering parties.

Dutch company, Deep BV, won the mini tender set up for this purpose. On 12 January the company made a start with the activities in the Port of IJmuiden. The survey is planned to be finished mid March and will be followed up by a geotechnical investigation. The data of both campaigns will be used to create a geological model for the sites.

Eneco Luchterduinen

Construction of the 129MW Eneco Luchterduinen windfarm, located 23km off the Dutch coast, is in full progress. In October 2014 the last of the 44 foundations were installed by Van Oord’s new installation vessel.” Another milestone was reached in November when the installation of the inter field cables was completed. A total of around 32km of 33kV cables connect the 43 turbines to the offshore substation.

All cable connections from the wind farm to the onshore grid are now in place. When commissioned, due in Q4 this year, the electricity produced by the turbines will feed into this substation and be transformed to 150kV in order to be transported by the 26km long export cable to the landfall on the coast at Noordwijk.From here an 8km underground cable will transport the electricity to the onshore substation at Sassenheim.

The offshore substation, an approximately 900t 4 floor construction, is currently being completed at the Cofely Fabricom yard in Hoboken, Belgium, and is planned to be ready for float out and installation in February. This will be followed shortly after by the installation of the Vestas turbines.

Albatros

At the end of 2014 German developer EnBW Energie Baden-Württemberg AG announced it had acquired the Albatros offshore wind farm project, approximately 400MW, from the consortium partners STRABAG and the Norderland/ETANAX Group.

Albatros is located 105km off the German coast and covers an area of 39km2 with water depths ranging from 39 to 40m. It is near one of EnBW’s other wind farms, Hohe See.

EnBW now controls a total of more than 1,570MW of approved offshore capacity in the German sector of the North Sea.