Subsidy-free offshore wind power is only days away

Installation works are well underway at the 1.5 GW Hollandse Kust Zuid – the world’s first subsidy-free offshore wind farm – to ensure that electricity starts flowing to the Dutch grid in early May.

The first of the wind farm’s 140 Siemens Gamesa 11.0-200 DD wind turbines was installed at the site some 20 kilometres off the Dutch province of Zuid-Holland last week.

The wind turbines are being transported from Sif’s facility at Maasvlakte 2 in the Port of Rotterdam and installed by Cadeler’s wind turbine installation vessel – Wind Osprey. The turbine installation campaign is expected to be completed by March 2023.

This work is being carried out in parallel with the installation of the monopile foundations and the inter-array cables at the site.

The piling of the remaining 104 foundations has started again following the winter break, with Seaway Strashnov transporting and installing three foundations at a time, Vattenfall said.

Jumbo’s Fairplayer is placing the external working platforms on the foundations after the foundations are installed. The foundation installation work is expected to be completed this summer.

Seaway Offshore Cables’ (SOC) Siem Aimery has installed the first batch of 24 inter-array cables and will return to the WIND facility in Velsen-Noord to load out the next 31 connections later this month, followed by a further 15 connections after that, thus completing the scope on the HKZ 1 and 2 sites. The inter-array cables for this section were provided by TKF.

The installation of the inter-array cables on HKZ 3 and 4, provided by Prysmian, will be carried out in July.

Once all of the 140 wind turbines are installed and commissioned in the summer of 2023, Hollandse Kust Zuid will become the world’s largest offshore wind farm in operation.

Hollandse Kust Zuid is owned by Vattenfall, BASF, and Allianz. Vattenfall is leading the development of the project.