The second campaign of the installation of two export cables in the export corridors and construction site of the Beatrice offshore wind farm will start around 2 November, according to the project’s Notice to Mariners.
This phase of works will be taking place for around 10 days. During this period, the second length of the EC1 export cable (EC1.2) will be jointed to the end of the already installed cable length EC1.1 , and then laid to a wet store area in the vicinity of the planned Offshore Transmission Module (OTM) within the wind farm array.
Nexans will install the second section of the export cable by using its vessel Nexans Skagerrak.
The operation will start with preparatory work consisting of prelay survey and recovery of the end of EC1.1 to the deck of Skagerrak, followed by the jointing of EC1.1 to EC1.2 on board the vessel.
On completion of the jointing work, the vessel will commence the installation of the the new cable section to the wind farm area, where the end will be laid down in a loop on the seabed for recovery and connection at a later stage.
At the Beatrice site, Seaway Heavy Lifting’s (SHL) vessel Stanislav Yudin has installed 83 of the total of 86 foundation piles. Once the vessel completes the piling works, it will re-mobilise for jacket foundation installation and continue where SHL’s Oleg Strashnov left off. So far, 24 jacket foundations have been installed at the offshore construction site in the Outer Moray Firth off Scotland, approximately 13km off the Caithness coastline.
The 588MW wind farm will comprise Siemens 7MW turbines and two Siemens OTMs, all placed on top of jacket foundations. The first wind turbines are scheduled to be installed in summer 2018, with the wind farm expected to be commissioned by the end of 2019.