Wind Turbine Installation on Dogger Bank A to Resume in May, Voltaire Undergoing Scheduled Maintenance in Netherlands

March 27, 2024, by Adrijana Buljan

The jack-up vessel Voltaire has installed twelve wind turbines at the Dogger Bank A offshore wind farm in the UK so far and is currently in Vlissingen, the Netherlands, where it will undergo scheduled maintenance and return to the UK project in May.

This is according to a Notice of Operations from the project issued on 25 March.

Monopiles have been installed at all 95 wind turbine locations and the installation of the transition pieces (TPs), performed by the vessel Seaway Alfa Lift, is currently underway with 80 TPs in place.

Jan De Nul’s vessel Voltaire installed the first of the 95 Haliade-X 13 MW turbines at the Dogger Bank A site in September 2023 and has since installed eleven more, before leaving for scheduled maintenance in Vlissingen, where the vessel arrived on 20 March, according to AIS data available online.

The installation of inter-array cables (IAC) is also ongoing at Dogger Bank A with the cable-laying vessel (CLV) Viking Neptun laying the cables, the walk-to-work (W2W) vessel Esvagt Froude supporting the cable pull-in operations, and the multipurpose vessel Living Stone carrying out cable burial work.

The IAC work will continue over different campaigns until 30 June 2024.

Dogger Bank A was planned to enter commercial operation this year, however, SSE said in February that the 1.2 GW offshore wind farm, the first of the three phases of the 3.6 GW Dogger Bank Wind Farm, may not be fully operational until 2025.

The delay is expected due to challenging weather conditions impacting wind turbine installation and vessel availability and supply chain delays further impacting progress, said SSE, which owns the wind farm together with Equinor and Vårgrønn.

Monopile installation on the second 1.2 GW phase, Dogger Bank B, has also been delayed. According to filings available on the UK government’s website, submitted by the Dogger Bank Wind Farm consortium in November 2023, the installation of monopiles is expected to commence this month, however, according to the information in the latest notices of operations, there is currently no construction activity at the Dogger Bank B site.

The first two 1.2 GW phases of what will become the world’s largest offshore wind farm, Dogger Bank A and Dogger Bank B, will comprise 95 Haliade-X 13 MW turbines each, while Dogger Bank C will feature 87 Haliade-X 14 MW turbines.

The entire 3.6 GW Dogger Bank Wind Farm is scheduled to be completed in 2026.