VOS Start Gears Up for Walney Extension Offshore Wind Farm

Vroon’s first DP2 subsea-support walk-to-work (W2W) vessel, VOS Start, will start her first offshore wind charter at DONG Energy’s Walney Extension offshore wind farm following her official naming ceremony scheduled for next Thursday, 20 July.

VOS Start is currently at Damen Shiprepair Oranjewerf yard in Amsterdam where she is being finished and has just been fitted with a motion compensated gangway launched recently by Barge Master and Bosch Rexroth.

The gangway platform is installed on the side of a tower upon which it can be vertically raised or lowered to adjust to the height of the offshore installation. This allows low-gradient walks to the transition piece or offshore transformer installation. There is also a lift within the tower to take personnel and light freight to the platform level.

Following the naming ceremony, VOS Start will start working for MHI Vestas Offshore Wind during the installation and commissioning of 40 MHI Vestas 8MW turbines at the 659MW Walney Extension wind farm off Cumbria, UK. The clients’ container units are already on-board the vessel.

H2M Lightweight accommodation units have also been installed to increase the number of client technicians on-board to 65, amounting to a total number of 93 persons on board (POB). A helicopter-winch platform has been placed on top of the accommodation units.

The Damen yard has also installed a 50-tonne heave compensated crane built by SMST on the after deck and two CTV landing stations, one on the Starboard side and one astern.

The 659MW Walney Extension wind farm will, apart from the 40 MHI Vestas 8MW turbines, also feature 47 Siemens 7MW wind turbines.
The wind farm is scheduled for completion in 2019.