Hollandse Kust West Alpha Offshore Substation Topside Ready to Set Sail

August 10, 2023, by Adnan Memija

The assembly of the substation topside for TenneT’s Hollandse Kust West Alpha offshore wind farm has been completed at Equans’ yard in Hoboken, Belgium.

On 5 August, the substation topside was loaded onto the barge at the Equans BeLux – Offshore Business Unit yard in Hoboken and will soon set sail towards its final destination in the Dutch North Sea.

The unit has five decks and weighs more than 4,000 tonnes.

The offshore transformer platform was 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 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 jacket foundation for the platform was delivered last year and installed at its location in the Dutch North Sea in August 2022 by DEME’s vessel Orion.

Heerema Fabrication Group built the jacket foundation on behalf of Smulders and Equans.

The platform is planned to be commissioned in 2024 when it will be able to connect 700 MW of offshore wind capacity to the Dutch grid.

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Aside from the Hollandse Kust West Alpha substation, the Belgian companies Equans and Smulders are also responsible for delivering the offshore substations for the Hollandse Kust Noord and Hollandse Kust West Beta projects.

In October last year, the 3,500-tonne offshore substation topside was installed at the 759 MW Hollandse Kust Noord offshore wind farm, while the work on the jacket foundation and the topside for Hollandse Kust Beta started last year.