Sif Holding has secured a contract to manufacture two monopiles for the Borssele V demonstrator wind farm in the Dutch North Sea.
One of the monopiles will have a slip joint connection between the monopile foundation and the transition piece that connects the foundation and the tower, which has traditionally been a flanged or a grouted connection.
According to Sif, one foundation will be equipped with conical-shaped end pieces of the monopile and transition piece, which will save installation time offshore.
Although this technique has been applied successfully onshore, it was only used in offshore projects on a test basis, the company added.
The coating for the other monopile will be aluminium sprayed for a major part of the surface with a view to avoiding corrosion combined with minimizing the required maintenance activities.
“Sif considers it important to be part of innovations such as the ones being applied by our client Two Towers at Borssele V,” said Fred van Beers , Sif CEO.
“These innovations are aimed at either saving costs on the manufacturing of the products and/or the installation and its maintenance at sea or at ensuring an improvement of the environmental impact on sea life. The offshore wind industry is still young and innovations such as these help to further decrease the levelized costs of energy from offshore wind.”
The Borssele V project is being developed by the Two Towers consortium comprising Van Oord, Investri Offshore and Green Giraffe.
The 19MW wind farm will feature two MHI Vestas 9.5MW turbines and will use oyster seabeds as forms of erosion protection. Grid connection is scheduled for 2021.