Dutch offshore shipping company, C-bed Floating Hotels, will send its DP2 Walk-2-Work vessel, Wind Innovation, on a new offshore wind project in the German part of the North Sea, scheduled to start early next year.
According to C-bed, this vessel will be deployed during the installation phase of a 400MW offshore wind farm and will serve as a floating hotel and a base camp.
The project will kick off in January 2017, and Wind Innovation is chartered under a 7-10 months contract. C-bed will assist in the full installation and commissioning phase of the wind farm’s 67 offshore wind turbines.
Wind Innovation was recently upgraded to accommodate an additional 15 passengers. The vessel now offers accommodation for a total 105 passengers in 80 cabins.
Flemming Hjorth, Senior Sales Executive at C-bed, says: “We made a significant investment in connection with acquiring and rebuilding Wind Innovation. Therefore, I am pleased to acknowledge a great interest in our vessel from offshore wind operators and to see that this tailor-made vessel makes a real difference for the offshore workers during the installation phase. We’ll keep adding new features to Wind Innovation ensuring she remains state-of-the-art when it comes to offshore hotel and project solutions.”
C-bed did not disclose the name of the wind farm. However, the project’s capacity, the number of turbines, and construction timeline suggests that Wind Innovation will be working on the Veja Mate project located 95 km northwest from the island of Borkum. This EUR 1.9 billion offshore wind farm will feature 67 Siemens 6MW wind turbines and is expected to be fully operational by the end of 2017.
Wind Innovation is a former seismic survey vessel which was rebuilt to accommodate and transfer service personnel working on offshore wind farms.