Van Oord begins cable installation activities at Iberdrola’s Baltic Eagle

Van Oord has commenced inter-array cable installation activities at Iberdrola Deutschland’s 476 MW Baltic Eagle offshore wind farm in Germany.

After Van Oord’s heavy lift installation vessel Svanen completed the installation of all 50 monopiles for the Baltic Eagle offshore wind farm, Van Oord now continues installing transition pieces and starts cable installation.

According to the Dutch company, the loading of the inter-array cables onto Van Oord’s cable-laying vessel Nexus has started this week.

In total, Van Oord will install approximately 70 kilometers of 66 kV inter-array cables, manufactured by the subcontractor TKF. To protect the cables, Van Oord will deploy its trencher Dig-It later this year to bury them.

‘Very key milestones are being completed in the construction site and we’re looking forward to completing all installation work before commissioning can begin,” said Luis Pérez Portela, Baltic Eagle Director at Iberdrola.

Currently, the company is installing transition pieces that were manufactured by the Spanish firm Windar Renovables.

The units were transported from the manufacturing yard in Aviles, Spain, to the Van Oord storage facility in Mukran, Germany.

‘The installation of the monopiles marks a key milestone in the construction of the Baltic Eagle offshore wind farm. The contours are now visible. Now that the transition pieces are being installed and our cable-laying vessel is ready to install the inter-array cables, construction is progressing well,” said Henk Jan van Dijk, Project Director at Van Oord.

The Baltic Eagle offshore wind farm is located in the German Baltic Sea, northeast of the Rügen island off the Pomeranian coast, and is scheduled to be commissioned by the end of 2024.

The offshore wind farm will comprise 50 Vestas 9.5 MW wind turbines, installed on monopile foundations, and will be linked to the German high-voltage grid via the Ostwind 2 grid connection.

The 476 MW project is the second of three large-scale offshore wind farms Iberdrola has in Germany, alongside the 350 MW Wikinger and 300 MW Windanker.

Collectively, the three wind projects form the company’s so-called Baltic Hub, which will have a total capacity of more than 1.1 GW by 2026 and account for an investment of about €3.7 billion in total.