The Borssele series: Building Borssele

“We have overcome [a number of] challenges…” This notion appeared in announcements of the wind turbine installation completion at both Ørsted’s Borssele 1 & 2 and Blauwwind’s Borssele 3 & 4 offshore wind farms last year, as the teams working to bring the projects to their completion were fighting the COVID-19 pandemic and everything that came with it. Still, offshore construction works on both wind farms were finished on schedule.

DEME installed the first of the total of 94 Siemens Gamesa 8 MW wind turbines on Borssele 1 & 2 in April 2020, shortly after which the project delivered its first power. Using its jack-up vessel tandem Sea Installer and Sea Challenger, the company erected all the Siemens Gamesa units in five months, announcing the completion of the work at the beginning of September 2020.

 “Achieving this milestone has been made possible due to the collaborative and tireless efforts of countless individuals from Ørsted, DEME, SGRE and our subcontractors. Together we have overcome the unique challenges of executing turbine installation during these difficult times and delivered a fantastic result”, said Ben Beardsmore-Rust, Ørsted’s project manager for the turbine package.

“While installing turbines at Borssele III/IV, we have overcome a number of challenges arising from COVID. Not only have we needed to adjust our way of working on the installation vessel, but even the transport of technicians to the project has been an international challenge”, said Laurens van Pijkeren, Project Director at the now former MHI Vestas (now Vestas), as Van Oord’s installation vessel Aeolus installed the final of the 77 9.5 MW turbines at the Borssele 3 & 4 site some three months after the same work was completed on Borssele 1 & 2.

Along with challenges related to the global pandemic, project construction was also impacted by significantly more adverse weather than what could have been statistically expected.

Aeolus installed the first turbine on Borssele 3 & 4 at the end of May 2020, with the wind farm producing its first power in August and having all the turbines in place in around six months.

On Borssele 1 & 2, all the foundations, cables and wind turbines were installed in only nine months, after the first foundation was put in January last year. Wind turbine installation started just as DEME, using its jack-up Innovation, put half of the project’s foundations in place.

The monopiles for Ørsted’s 752 MW wind farm were supplied by EEW SPC and Sif, each delivering  47 units, while Bladt Industries and EEW OSB manufactured the transition pieces.

The Innovation vessel was loading the foundation components at Sif’s facility on Maasvlakte 2 in Rotterdam before transporting and installing them at the offshore construction site some 22 kilometres off the coast of Zeeland in the Netherlands.

Van Oord’s Aeolus, which installed both the wind turbines and the monopile foundations at Borssele 3 & 4, was also using Sif’s terminal at Maasvlakte 2 for foundation installation, as Sif produced all the TP-less monopiles for the project. The vessel installed the first monopile at the end of October 2019 and completed the work in April 2020.

Van Oord was also contracted to install inter-array cables on both Borssele offshore wind farms. The company used its cable-laying vessel Nexus to transport and install the inter-array cables supplied by Nexans on Borssele 1 & 2 and Prysmian’s cables on Borssele 3 & 4.

The Borssele 1 & 2, Ørsted’s first offshore wind farm in the Netherlands (half of which it later divested to Norges Bank Investment Management) was the first to cross the EUR 100/MWh barrier in the offshore wind sector at the Dutch competitive tender held in July 2016.

The 752 MW offshore wind farm went into operation in November 2020.

The Blauwwind consortium, comprising Partners Group (45%), Shell (20%), Diamond Generating Europe (15%), Van Oord (10%), and Eneco (10%), went even further with lowering the bidding price, winning the rights to develop Borssele 3 & 4 in December 2016 with a bid price of 5.45 Eurocents per kWh.

The 731.5 MW offshore wind farm started officially operating in February of this year.