Seaway7 Installs Final Foundation at Seagreen Offshore Wind Farm

April 17, 2023, by Adnan Durakovic

Seaway7 has installed the final wind turbine foundation on Seagreen Offshore Wind Farm, off the coast of Angus, Scotland, concluding the 18-month installation campaign.

The 114th jacket foundation was successfully installed late afternoon on Thursday, 13 April, by the Saipem 7000 crane vessel, which was used to lift each of the 2,000-tonne foundations into place.

As the main contractor, Seaway7 has managed the engineering, procurement, construction, and installation of the wind turbine generator foundations and is installing approximately 300 kilometres of associated inter-array cables.

”Installing all 114 jackets is one of the most significant milestones in the project. The Seagreen team have now installed more suction caisson foundations than any other offshore wind farm and pushed forward the boundaries of this technology. The Seagreen team and Seaway7 have excelled in the delivery of this complex scope of work which has resulted from outstanding effort on the installation phase by teams including those at Ramboll, Saipem and Global Energy Nigg. A huge thanks on behalf of SSE and Totalenergies shareholders for this achievement,” Seagreen’s Project Director, John Hill, said.

This major milestone followed soon after the installation of the world’s deepest wind turbine foundation which was achieved on Easter Sunday. Seagreen topped its own record from October 2022 by installing the foundation number 112 at a depth of 58.6 metres.

”We are immensely proud to be playing a significant role in the construction of the momentous Seagreen offshore wind farm. This achievement is the culmination of more than three years of hard work since the contract award to Seaway7 in June 2020, and sets a new benchmark for jacket fabrication and transportation of this scale in the offshore wind industry,” Lloyd Duthie, Vice President UK, Ireland and Asia at Seaway7, said.

Each foundation will support a Vestas V164-10 MW turbine. When complete, the 1.1GW wind farm will be capable of generating around 5,000 GWh of renewable energy annually which is enough electricity to power more than 1.6 million UK homes.

David Mitchell, Seagreen Project Director at Seaway7, said: ”This is a significant milestone for Seagreen and Seaway7. Good collaboration between all parties has been instrumental in the safe and timely execution of this complex and challenging project. We look forward to the completion of the cable installation in the coming months to conclude our full EPCI scope.”

Seagreen Offshore Wind Farm is a joint venture between SSE Renewables and TotalEnergies.

In October 2022, SSE Renewables and TotalEnergies received a go-ahead from the Scottish Ministers to increase the combined capacity of the remaining 36 wind turbines of the Seagreen offshore wind farm, at Seagreen 1A, from 360 MW to 500 MW, which will bring the project’s total installed capacity to 1,575 MW.