Island Crown Heads to East Anglia ONE

Siemens Gamesa has on behalf of ScottishPower Renewables contracted the service offshore vessel Island Crown to provide support during commissioning works on the 714MW East Anglia One offshore wind farm.

Island Crown will provide living conditions adjacent to the site located 43km off the Suffolk coast by enabling some 40 personnel involved in the commissioning of the wind farm to live offshore for up to two weeks at a time.

The vessel was mobilised to Great Yarmouth on 11 June and is being provided by Island Offshore. The contract duration is for 275 days with an option for a further 90, providing work for the vessel until the summer of 2020.

“Given the scale of works involved, this vessel will provide comfortable living conditions, safe access to the 102 Wind Turbine Generators and more efficient working as we look to bring East Anglia ONE on line as quickly and safely as possible,” Charlie Jordan, ScottishPower Renewables Project Director for East Anglia ONE, said.

“The windfarm will soon be producing clean, renewable energy for the UK, helping to meet the nation’s bold carbon reduction targets and this contract award is another significant part of that journey.”

Construction is already underway at the GBP 2.5 billion project. As reported earlier, DEME Offshore’s jack-up Sea Installer arrived in Great Yarmouth to load the first batch of turbine components and install them at the site.

Andrew Elmes, Project Manager for Siemens Gamesa, said: “We are delighted to be able to bring on the Island Crown to support our wind turbine installation contract on the East Anglia ONE project. This builds on the highly positive experience SGRE has had to date with the vessel and allows us to provide a familiar, safe and comfortable working environment for our commissioning teams. Given the new High Voltage technology on this project, working alongside our customer on this SOV will allow better collaboration in the commissioning phase, increasing the effectiveness of our offshore work to get the turbines on line more quickly.”