The first of the four jacket foundations has been installed at Ørsted’s Hornsea Project One wind farm site 120 kilometres off the coast of Yorkshire.
The foundation will support a 2800-tonne topside to form one of the three offshore substations. The fourth jacket will support a Reactive Compensation Station (RCS).
The four jackets, weighing up to 1,700 tonnes each, were manufactured in Spain by Dragados Offshore and have started their journey to the construction site earlier this month.
The three offshore substations will convert the electricity from the wind turbines’ medium voltage cables to high voltage, so it can be exported with fewer losses.
The electricity will then be transferred via the RCS to the National Grid. Having the RCS enables transmission with High Voltage Alternating Current through much longer cables than would otherwise be possible.
When completed in 2020, the 1.2GW Hornsea Project One will be the biggest wind farm in the world, capable of supplying electricity to well over one million homes, Ørsted said.
The wind farm will comprise 174 Siemens Gamesa 7MW wind turbines.