Vattenfall Orders Reusable Monopile Covers for Hollandse Kust Zuid

Vattenfall has ordered 140 reusable monopile covers for the Hollandse Kust Zuid (HKZ) offshore wind farm from Theuws Polyester, which will work together with Composite Cover Manufacturing on the project.

The first 40 covers are planned to be delivered this year and the remaining 100 in 2022.

“The design of these monopile covers is innovative, sustainable and cost-saving. The construction consists of different fiber reinforced polyester panels which are connected to each other with metal strips and bolted together. The panels can be reused and adapted to other diameter monopiles for different offshore windfarms”, Theuws Polyester states.

Theuws will manufacture and assemble the monopile covers, while CCM will render all services on site and handle the communication during the supply of the 140 units. CCM will also take back all panels after they have served their purpose on HKZ in order to reuse them on other projects.

The installation of wind turbine foundations at the Hollandse Kust Zuid site offshore the Netherlands started at the beginning of July, with Seaway Strashnov carrying the first batch of TP-less monopile foundations to be installed.

The jacket foundations for the 700 MW HKZ Alpha and Beta platforms, which will collect the electricity generated at the 1.5 GW offshore wind farm and deliver it to the Dutch grid, were installed earlier.

The wind farm will comprise 140 Siemens Gamesa 11 MW wind turbines scheduled to be fully operational in 2023.

Once fully commissioned, HKZ will be the largest offshore wind farm in the world and also the first one ever to be built without subsidies for the power produced.

HKZ is owned by Vattenfall (50.5 per cent) and, as of recently, by BASF (49.5).