Sparrows Handles Hornsea One Cables

Sparrows Group Cable and Pipe Lay Solutions (CPLS) division has delivered its largest renewables project through three contracts related to the 1.2GW Hornsea Project One offshore wind farm.

The three contracts were awarded through Boskalis (formerly VBMS), DEME Offshore (formerly known as Tideway), and DeepOcean.

The work scope saw Sparrows provide equipment and personnel to handle the nearshore, export, and inter-array cables for the Hornsea One offshore wind farm.

Under construction at the site located 120km off the UK’s Yorkshire coast, Hornsea One is poised to be the world’s largest offshore wind farm when fully operational in 2020.

Working with Boskalis, a specialist team of personnel installed and operated two 10Te cable tensioners and one 15Te tensioner to transfer three 245kV export cables from the vessel NDurance to the landfall location. Bespoke track pads were used to ensure cable clamping limits were maintained for the duration of the pull-in activities and Sparrows provided sea fastenings packages for the equipment.

The company also supported DEME Offshore with the installation of the three export cables offshore to the Reactive Compensation Station (RCS) and onto the three substations using a 36Te 4-Track Tensioner. It is the longest AC offshore wind export cable system ever to have been installed.

The equipment was integrated into the Connector cable lay vessels’ lay spread system and used for spooling and laying activities for over 300km of cable. Data from the tensioners was logged and fed to the clients monitoring software by serial output throughout the project.

A further contract was awarded to Sparrows by DeepOcean to provide a Linear Cable Engine and operators on board the Edda Freya for the inter-array cable installations.

Ewen Kerr, chief technical officer, said: “We have experienced an upsurge in business from the renewable sector in the last 12 months and the combination of the three contracts won for Hornsea One, makes this our most significant cable lay project to date. One of the contracts marks the first time we have conducted nearshore cable transfer operations and this is a testament to our highly trained engineering teams who worked to develop the most effective solution for our client.”