Smulders has put the first upper jacket for the Beatrice offshore wind farm’s foundation on top of the first lower jacket, thus completing the first foundation for the 588MW project.
The upper jacket parts are produced at the Smulders yards in Belgium, whereas the lower jacket parts are produced at the Smulders Projects UK yard in Newcastle upon Tyne. The complete jacket now has a height of approximately 70 meters.
The jacket foundations for the 84-turbine offshore wind farm are being produced by Smulders (28), BiFab (26) and Bladt (30).
Seaway Heavy Lifting (SHL), which won the EPCI contract for Beatrice foundations and array cables together with its mother company Subsea 7, has already started installing piles for the foundations and completed the work at 14 locations so far. The piling is being carried out by the heavy lift vessel Stanislav Yudin.
The Beatrice project – developed by a joint venture partnership between SSE (40%), Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (35%) and Red Rock Power Ltd. (25%) – will feature Siemens 7MW turbines.
The offshore wind farm is expected to become fully operational in 2019.