Yard Work Starts on Hollandse Kust West Alpha Topside

March 15, 2023, by Adrijana Buljan

The topside for the Hollandse Kust West Alpha offshore substation has now left the hall where initial construction works were being done and moved to a yard in Hoboken, Belgium, where the remaining work will continue before the platform is ready to be installed offshore the Netherlands.

Hollandse Kust West Alpha topside at the Hoboken yard; Photo source: Equans

The offshore transformer platform is being constructed by a joint venture between Iemants, a subsidiary of Smulders, and Equans (formerly known as ENGIE), under a contract with TenneT signed in 2020.

The jacket foundation for the platform was delivered last year and installed at its location in the Dutch North Sea in August 2022.

The first steel for the topside was cut in 2021 and, according to information about the project’s timeline shared earlier, it is scheduled to be installed on top of the jacket this summer.

The transformer substation is scheduled to be commissioned in 2024, from when it will be able to connect 700 MW of offshore wind capacity to the Dutch grid.

This is the third of the three offshore substations the Belgian companies are delivering to the Dutch transmission system operator (TSO), the other two being the Hollandse Kust Noord and Hollandse Kust West Beta substations.

The Hollandse Kust Noord platform was installed in October last year, while the work on the jacket foundation and the topside for Hollandse Kust Beta started last year.