Van Oord has appointed the Esbjerg-based Niels Winther Maritime to serve as an agent for the wind farm installation vessel Aeolus over the summer.
Aeolus will be working out of the Port of Esbjerg over the summer, loading turbine components for the Deutsche Bucht offshore wind project and then transporting and installing them in the German North Sea.
Van Oord and Niels Winther Maritime previously cooperated on the 600MW Gemini offshore wind farm in the Dutch North Sea.
Deutsche Bucht will feature a total of 33 MHI Vestas 8.4MW wind turbines. They will be installed on 31 monopile foundations and two mono bucket foundations some 95 kilometres northwest of the Borkum Island in Germany.
The 269MW project, owned by Canada’s Northland Power, will become the first offshore wind farm to test the mono buckets under commercial operating conditions. The turbine installation is expected to start shortly and the wind farm is scheduled to be fully operational by the end of the year.