First Offshore Substation Soon to Be Installed at Moray West

December 11, 2023, by Adrijana Buljan

Work on the installation of the two offshore substations (OSS) at the Moray West offshore wind farm site has started, with Boskalis’s DP installation vessel Bokalift 1 currently moored in the Port of Nigg with the components for the first OSS on board.

Bokalift 1 and Bokalift 2 at the Moray West offshore wind farm site; Photo: Boskalis via LinkedIn

The Moray West project team notified about the commencement of the OSS installation campaign on 20 November, saying that the work will start on 26 November and that the substations are expected to be installed by mid/end of December 2023, subject to weather conditions and the progress of the works.

On 11 December, Moray West issued a weekly notice of operations, according to which Bokalift 1 is currently alongside Nigg with the transition piece and the topside for the first offshore substation already loaded onto the vessel’s deck.

Monopile foundations for both offshore substations have already been installed by Bokalift 2, which is still working at the offshore wind farm site.

Bokalift 1‘s scope of work involves the installation of the J-Tube cages, transition pieces (TP) and topsides for both Moray West offshore substations.

The substations are Siemens Energy’s offshore transformer modules (OTMs), delivered under a contract secured by the consortium of Siemens Energy and Iemants, a subsidiary of Smulders.

The consortium partners loaded out and dispatched the topsides at the beginning of last month, with the OTMs arriving in Scotland by mid-November.

At the end of last month, the first batch of transition pieces (TPs), including the two for the offshore substations, arrived at the Port of Nigg in the Cromarty Firth.

The 882 MW Moray West offshore wind farm, developed by Ocean Winds, is located in the Moray Firth, approximately 22.5 kilometres from the Caithness coastline, where major offshore construction work started at the beginning of October with the installation of the first monopile foundation.

Moray West will comprise 60 Siemens Gamesa 14.7 MW wind turbines and is scheduled to be fully operational in 2025. Once commissioned, the offshore wind farm is expected to meet the electricity requirements of about 650,000 households in Scotland for 25 years.