Last Rentel Transition Pieces Leave Smulders Hoboken Yard

GeoSea, part of DEME Group, has taken delivery of the last two out of the 42 transition pieces built for the 309MW Rentel offshore wind farm from the Smulders fabrication yard in Hoboken, Belgium.

The final TPs are en route to Rotterdam, the Netherlands, where they will be loaded onto GeoSea’s jack-up Innovation.

Innovation is currently installing the wind turbine foundations in the Belgian North Sea, with over 30 units now in place, according to Rentel NV, the owner and developer of the project.

The Rentel wind farm will comprise 42 Siemens D7 type wind turbines, each with an individual installed capacity of 7.35MW, installed on monopile foundations approximately 40km off the coast of Ostend.

DEME, with its subsidiaries GeoSea and Tideway, is the Engineering, Procurement, Construction and Installation (EPCI) contractor for the wind farm, and has awarded Sif and Smulders with a contract to manufacture the wind turbine foundations. STX France will deliver the offshore substation, Prysmian is in charge of supplying the inter-array cables, while ABB will provide the export cable system.

The first Rentel turbines are expected to deliver power to the Belgian grid by mid-2018, while the entire offshore project is planned to become fully operational by the end of 2018.

Rentel NV is a consortium of eight Belgian shareholders, including Otary Offshore Energy, DEME Group and Elicio NV.