Norther OHVS Scores a Touchdown

On the evening of 22 August, the offshore high-voltage station (OHVS) for Belgian Norther offshore wind farm was placed on top of its monopile foundation that was installed earlier at the project site located some 23km off the port of Zeebrugge.

The offshore wind farm will comprise 44 MHI Vestas V164-8.0 MW turbines, optimised to deliver a maximum output of 8.4MW, whose generated electricity (33kV) will be transported to the offshore substation and converted to a voltage of 220kV before being delivered to the land through the export cable.

Onshore, the project is connected to the Belgian grid through Elia’s Stevin high-voltage station.

The offshore substation topside was built at Engie Fabricom’s yard in Hoboken, under a contract Van Oord – the Balance of Plant contractor – awarded to a consortium comprising ENGIE Fabricom, Smulders and CG. Smulders has also worked on the OHVS foundation, as the company is in charge of the outfitting of the transition pieces (TPs) for the Norther project as part of a foundation manufacturing contract Van Oord signed with Sif.

The offshore works at the wind farm site began in May with the installation of scour protection. At the beginning of August, Van Oord’s vessel Aeolus started installing the monopile foundations.