Fugro on floating LiDAR duty offshore Denmark

Danish transmission system operator (TSO) Energinet has awarded Fugro a contract to deploy multiple floating LiDARs at the new offshore wind farm sites in Denmark.

There are four new sites the Danish government has designated for offshore wind farms, which could add as much as 7.2 GW of new capacity: North Sea I (Nordsø I), Kattegat II, Kriegers Flak II, and Hesselø.

In autumn 2022, the board of the Danish TSO Energinet officially gave the green light to carry out the feasibility studies for the new offshore wind areas, and at the end of the same year, the Danish Energy Agency (DEA) issued permits to Energinet to initiate preliminary site investigations at Kattegat II, Kriegers Flak II, and Hesselø.

Now, Energinet awarded a contract worth in total of €13 million to Fugro to deploy floating LiDARs for twelve-month wind measurement campaigns at the four sites.

Two floating LiDAR buoys will be deployed in the Kattegat Sea, where Kattegat and Hesselø South sites are located, with one additional buoy planned to be kept in reserve for contingency. The contract for this area is worth €4 million.

For the Kriegers Flak II offshore wind area in the Baltic Sea, two floating LiDARs will also be deployed and one buoy to be kept for contingency. The contract value is the same as the previous one, €4 million.

At the North Sea I area, three floating LiDAR will be deployed and one kept in reserve, under a contract worth €5 million.

The one-year contracts will contain an extension option for either another twelve-month period or month-to-month extensions for up to six months.

At the beginning of last year, Fugro’s Seawatch Wind LiDAR buoy achieved Stage 3 rating under the Carbon Trust Offshore Wind Accelerator (OWA) Roadmap for the commercial acceptance of floating LiDAR technology.

In March of this year, the Dutch geo-data specialist company and Gardline were awarded a contract to carry out preliminary geotechnical investigations for the future offshore wind farms in the Danish North Sea, Kattegat, and Danish Baltic Sea.

The Hesselø offshore wind farm will have an installed capacity of between 800 MW and 1,200 MW and is expected to be fully operational by 2029, at the latest.

Kattegat II, Kriegers Flak II, and North Sea I, each having an installed capacity of up to 2 GW, are planned to be built by 2030.