Seaway Heavy Lifting’s crane vessel Oleg Strashnov has installed the offshore substation on the 336MW Galloper wind farm situated in the outer Thames Estuary, some 27 kilometres off the Suffolk coast.
The jacket and the topside, built in Hartlepool by Heerema Fabrication Group, were installed on Friday, 12 May, Seaway Heavy Lifting said.
The Galloper wind farm will comprise 56 Siemens 6MW wind turbines, with the wind turbine installation vessel Pacific Orca currently installing the first units at the site.
GeoSea installed the 56 foundations at the site at the end of March, two months ahead of schedule. VBMS is installing the wind farm’s inter array-cables.
The wind farm was initially scheduled to be commissioned in early 2018, however, the commissioning will most likely be pushed forward to late 2017.
The GBP 1.5 billion Galloper project is being developed by innogy SE on behalf of the project partners, UK Green Investment Bank (GIB), Siemens Financial Services and Macquarie Capital.