Offshore Construction Starting Soon at Moray West Site

September 27, 2023, by Adrijana Buljan

The installation of monopile foundations at the 882 MW Moray West offshore wind farm in Scotland is expected to start on 1 October.

The work will be carried out by the vessel Bokalift 2, under a contract Boskalis signed with the developer Ocean Winds at the beginning of this year.

Monopile installation is part of a larger scope of work starting on 1 October that also includes the installation of the transition pieces and the project’s offshore substations.

The Moray West offshore wind farm will comprise 60 Siemens Gamesa 14.7 MW wind turbines and two offshore substations, all installed on monopile foundations, 48 of which are delivered by Dajin Heavy Industry and 14 by Navantia Seanergies and Windar Renovables.

All of the 62 transition pieces for the offshore foundations will be manufactured and delivered by Lamprell.

Monopiles at the 62 foundation locations and the topsides of the offshore substations will be installed using dynamically positioned installation vessels while the installation of the transition pieces will be carried out from a jack-up vessel, according to a Notice to Mariners from the project.

In February, Boskalis said the company would deploy its DP crane vessel Bokalift 2 for the installation of the monopiles and that, as part of the installation campaign, it would also install the two substations with their respective transition pieces.

The works on installing the foundations and the offshore substations are anticipated to be completed by June 2024, with the installation of monopiles and substation topsides planned to be completed by the end of March or in early April 2024, while all the transition pieces are planned to be in place by June 2024.

Moray West, scheduled for operation in 2025, is located off the east coast of Scotland in the Moray Firth. The offshore export cable will come ashore to the east of Sandend Bay on the Aberdeenshire Coast, from where the onshore cable will then run for 31 kilometres to the onshore substation at Whitehillock by the A96 and on to the connection point with the National Grid at the Blackhillock substation outside Keith.

Once completed, the 882 MW offshore wind farm is expected to meet the electricity requirements of about 650,000 households in Scotland for the next 25 years.

The project secured a 15-year Contract for Difference (CfD) last year for the delivery of 294 MW offshore wind generation at GBP 37.35/MWh (in 2012 prices) and was the first project from the UK’s Contract for Difference (CfD) Allocation Round 4 to reach financial close.

Moray West also has a corporate power purchase agreement (CPPA) in place with Google, which “booked” the equivalent of 100 MW of the project’s generation capacity for 12 years.

The Moray West offshore wind farm is being developed by Ocean Winds, a 50-50 joint venture between EDP Renewables and ENGIE, with a small minority stake held by UAB Ignitis Renewables.