Seafox wins contract for DolWin Alpha & Gamma offshore grid platforms

TenneT has selected Seafox to provide an accommodation jack-up barge for operations on DolWin Alpha and DolWin Gamma offshore platforms in Germany.

The transmission system operator (TSO) was looking for an offshore jack-up barge that could accommodate up to 47 persons on board (POBs) in single cabin occupancy, with direct access to the DolWin Alpha and DolWin Gamma offshore platforms.

Under the contract, awarded on 19 August, a vessel from the Seafox fleet will be deployed from 12 September to 22 December 2020.

According to the contract award notice, the contract was awarded under an emergency procedure, without prior publication of a call for competition in the Official Journal of the European Union, due to COVID-19-related issues.

“Due to the fact that maintenance campaigns had to be postponed due to COVID-19, our contractor could not provide accommodation for the staff for the maintenance campaign and several campaigns had to be coordinated and merged, it was not possible to conclude an EU tender for this service item, since several aspects were flexible and could only be confirmed in the last 2 weeks”, the notice says.

TenneT intends to publish a pre-qualification system for the provision of jack-up barges by the end of September 2020, so the TSO could be prepared for any further unplanned and unpredictable instances requiring a jack-up barge.

The DolWin Alpha and DolWin Gamma, the hearts of German DolWin1 and DolWin3 high-voltage direct current (HVDC) offshore grid connections, have been in operation since 2015 and 2018, respectively.

DolWin1, with a capacity of 800 MW, connects the Borkum Riffgrund 1, Trianel Windpark Borkum (TWB), and Trianel Windpark Borkum II (TWBII) offshore wind farms to the German transmission grid. 

The 900 MW DolWin3 offshore grid links the Merkur and Borkum Riffgrund 2 offshore wind farms to the onshore transmission grid.