Borssele III & IV Stands Complete

The final of the 77 MHI Vestas V164-9.5 MW turbines has been installed at the Borssele III & IV offshore wind farm in the Dutch North Sea.

The last turbine was secured on-site on Thursday, 26 November.

The final set of turbines will now be commissioned and tested in preparation for full power generation, the Blauwwind consortium, the owners and developers of the 731.5 MW project, said.

“Good project execution starts with great preparation and planning; the start date of turbine installation was picked in 2017 and met precisely on the day in May this year,” said Roeland Borsboom, Project Director and CEO for Blauwwind.

”Overcoming many additional challenges in this extraordinary year required even more collaboration between all key parties, and led to a successful completion of the installation phase.”

Van Oord’s installation vessel Aeolus loaded the units in sets of four from the port of Vlissingen prior to transporting and installing them at the 146-square-kilometre site.

Aeolus installed the first turbine at the site some 22 kilometres off Zeeland at the end of May. The wind farm produced its first power in August.

In addition to challenges related to the global COVID pandemic, project construction at Borssele III & IV had also been impacted by adverse weather that has been significantly higher than what could have been statistically expected, MHI Vestas said.

While installing turbines at Borssele III/IV, we have overcome a number of challenges arising from COVID,” said Laurens van Pijkeren, MHI Vestas Project Director.

“Not only have we needed to adjust our way of working on the installation vessel, but even the transport of technicians to the project has been an international challenge. Therefore, we are very pleased and proud to safely install all 77 V164 turbines on time and to now prepare for the full commissioning of this significant project for the Netherlands.”

Once fully commissioned, the wind farm is expected to produce around 3 TWh of electricity per year, enough to power the equivalent of 825,000 Dutch households, or to power up to 2.3 per cent of total Dutch electricity demand.

The Blauwwind consortium comprises Partners Group (45%), Shell (20%), DGE (15%), Eneco Group (10%), and Van Oord (10%). Van Oord is also the project’s Balance of Plant (BoP) contractor.