Hornsea Two Offshore Wind Farm Hits Major Construction Milestones

Ørsted’s 1,386 MW Hornsea Two offshore wind farm, soon to be the world’s largest, has reached several significant construction milestones, with more to come in the coming days.

All of the wind farm’s turbine foundations have now been installed, as well as the project’s offshore substation at the North Sea site 89 kilometres off the Yorkshire coast, UK.

The Hornsea Two OSS is the world’s largest AC Offshore Substation weighing around 8,000 tonnes, and has been safely lifted into position by the vessel Sleipnir, Ørsted said.

Also onsite is the Reactive Compensation Station (RCS) which will be lifted into place in the coming days. Together, the OSS and RCS have a combined weight of 10,200 tonnes and have just completed their 8,500 nautical mile journey from Sembcorp Marine’s facility in Singapore.

Meanwhile, the installation of the 165 monopile foundations means that the project is ready for the final third of wind turbines that are yet to be installed.

Finally, the project has also recently laid all 390 kilometres of export cable needed to take the electricity generated from the wind farm to the onshore substation and ultimately the National Grid.

”It has been a very busy and exciting time for the everyone involved in the project with the successful installation of the OSS and the completion of the foundation installation programme,” Patrick Harnett, Programme Director for Hornsea Two at Ørsted said.

”These twin milestones, together with the completion of our export cable circuits, mark the culmination of a truly monumental scope of work involving multiple teams from numerous companies working together in the face of some significant challenges over the last 18 months. The completion of the foundation installations marks the end of half a million hours’ work, achieved on a challenging timetable and most importantly with an outstanding safety record throughout.”

Spanning an offshore area of 462 square kilometres, Hornsea Two will be the world’s largest wind farm when it goes into operation in 2022, producing enough electricity to power more than 1.3 million homes.

”Seeing Hornsea Two reach this landmark is a great moment – it’s been a challenging time for everyone over the last year or two and keeping this major asset on track for completion in 2022 underlines the truly remarkable effort made by everyone working on the project,” Duncan Clark, Head of UK Region for Ørsted, said.

”Hornsea Two will become our 13th offshore wind farm in the UK and once it’s operational Ørsted will be supplying over 7% of Britain’s electricity, the culmination of a £13bn investment over the last decade or so. As we progress with the development of future offshore wind projects, our secured pipeline including Hornsea Three and Four will double this investment again over this decade, and we are actively pursuing additional large-scale UK opportunities both onshore and offshore.”