Borssele Beta offshore substation topside sets sail

The Borssele Beta offshore substation topside has sailed out from HSM Offshore’s yard in Schiedam to the installation site in the Dutch North Sea, TenneT said.

The 700MW offshore grid connection is scheduled to be operational on September 1, the Dutch transmission system operator said.

Borssele Beta will connect the 731.5MW Borssele III and IV wind farm, currently being built by the Blauwwind consortium approximately 22 kilometres off the coast of Zeeland, to the Dutch grid.

The electricity generated at the wind farm will be brought ashore via two 67-kilometre cables to the high-voltage onshore station in Borssele.

The Borssele III and IV wind farm will feature 77 MHI Vestas V164 9.5MW turbines installed on monopile foundations and scheduled to be commissioned in 2021.

The offshore construction on the wind farm started in October 2019 with the installation of the first monopile foundations.

HSM Offshore constructed both the Borssele Beta and the Borssele Alpha, the first large-scale grid connections to be constructed for TenneT under the National Energy Agreement for offshore wind farms in the Netherlands.

The Blauwwind consortium comprisesPartners Group (45%), Shell (20%), DGE (15%), Eneco Group (10%) and Van Oord (10%).