Smulders Loads Out First Moray West OTM

September 28, 2023, by Adrijana Buljan

Smulders has loaded out the first of the two Offshore Transformer Modules (OTMs) for the Moray West offshore wind farm at its yard in Newcastle, UK, readying the OTM for sail-out at the end of the next month.

The company will load the second OTM onto a barge in the second half of October and dispatch it to Scotland a few weeks later, according to a social media post Smulders published on 27 September.

As offshoreWIND.biz reported yesterday, major offshore construction work at the Moray West project site is set to start on 1 October with the installation of the first monopiles. The project’s 62 monopiles and two offshore substation topsides (Siemens Energy’s OTMs) are expected to be installed by the end of March/early April 2024, and all the foundation transition pieces are planned to be in place until June next year.

Smulders is delivering the two OTMs for Moray West under a contract the company won in a consortium with Siemens Energy in 2021.

According to the offshore wind farm’s developer, Ocean Winds, a key part of the selection was the plan by the consortium between Siemens Energy and Iemants (a subsidiary of Smulders) to bring assembly and fit out of the OTMs at the Smulders Projects UK yard in Newcastle.

The OTMs, as well as the monopile foundations, will be installed by Boskalis.

The offshore wind farm, located off the east coast of Scotland in the Moray Firth, will comprise 60 Siemens Gamesa 14.7 MW wind turbines.

Once it is fully operational in 2025, the 882 MW Moray West offshore wind farm is expected to meet the electricity requirements of about 650,000 households in Scotland for the next 25 years.