Cadeler has signed a firm contract for a wind turbine installation vessel to be used on Ørsted’s Gode Wind 3 and Borkum Riffgrund 3 offshore wind farms in Germany, following a preferred supplier agreement signed last month.
The contract covers the transportation and installation of a minimum of 48 Siemens Gamesa 11 MW turbines. The company will deploy its O-class installation vessel Wind Osprey on the two wind farms, which by the time the project is set to start, will have a new and upgraded main crane.
Wind Osprey ‘s new main crane with a lifting capacity of 1,600 metric tonnes at a radius of 40 metres, with the main hook at a height of 160 metres above the main deck.
“The installation of this Siemens Gamesa 11 MW WTG has become somewhat of a specialty for the Cadeler’s O-class vessels, which will be employed in all current projects of the similar type of installation in the region” , the company said in a press release.
Cadeler is also replacing the main crane on its jack-up vessel Wind Orca .
Replacement of the crane on Wind Orca is expected to begin in October 2023, with completion in March 2024. The same work on Wind Osprey is now also scheduled to start in the fourth quarter of 2023 and to be completed around the same time as on Wind Orca .
Gode Wind 3 and Borkum Riffgrund 3 offshore wind farms, which will have a total capacity of more than 1 GW, are expected to be fully commissioned in 2024 and 2025 respectively, subject to Ørsted’s final investment decision.
Final investment decisions for both projects are expected to be made by the end of 2021.
Gode Wind 3 will have a total of 242 MW of export capacity and will feature 23 Siemens Gamesa 11 MW turbines, while Borkum Riffgrund 3 will comprise 83 turbines of the same type and, with the capacity of 900 MW, will be Ørsted’s largest offshore wind farm in Germany as well as the largest offshore wind farm in in the country.
In April, the developer received planning approval from Germany’s Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency (BSH) for the 242 MW Gode Wind 3 and for the 900 MW Borkum Riffgrund 3 last month.
Borkum Riffgrund 3 and Gode Wind 3 emerged as single projects in 2019, after Ørsted combined Borkum Riffgrund West 1, Borkum Riffgrund West 2 and OWP West, and Gode Wind 3 and 4, for which it was awarded subsidy-free development rights in the offshore wind auctions in 2017 and 2018 , into two projects, which are now being developed in parallel.