Tampnet Hooks Up Hornsea One

Norwegian offshore communication network operator Tampnet has won a contract to supply 4G/LTE coverage to Ørsted’s Hornsea One offshore wind farm.

The 1,218MW Hornsea One is located 120 kilometers off the Yorkshire Coast, in the UK, and will be the world’s largest offshore wind farm when fully operational in 2020.

Tampnet was awarded the contract for providing and operating a 4G/LTE network for Hornsea One, and has installed base stations on the reactive compensation station securing 4G coverage between shore and the wind farm area. Base stations have also been installed on the three substations securing 4G coverage in the wind farm area for all construction vessels and Ørsted’s service operations vessel, Edda Mistral.

“Not only is it the world’s lagest offshore windfarm, it is also the very first windfarm that Tampnet supplies with 4G/LTE coverage – a true milestone for us,” said Tampnet Managing Director North Sea, Per Atle Sørensen.

Hornsea One will span an area of approximately 407 square kilometres, which is over five times the size of the city of Hull. The offshore wind farm will use 174 Siemens Gamesa 7MW wind turbines, half of which are now installed and commissioned.

The teams constructing and operating the wind farm live offshore for up to two weeks at a time.

“Hornsea One keeps pushing the boundaries. It’s the furthest a wind farm has ever been built from shore so we’ve had to introduce new ways of doing things, and the superfast Tampnet internet connection offshore, during the construction phase, is a great example of that,” Stefan Hoonings, Hornsea One’s construction manager, said.

“Initially we were able to piggy-back on an existing Tampnet network on oil and gas platform over 50 kilometers north of our project site. We’ve created a fully functioning office offshore, enabling us to base the site coordination and planning teams on site, and thanks to the high speed connection we can fully digitalise our operations.”