Effective works Phase 2 - 3

2012 : week 10

All 24 jackets for phase III are under construction at the construction yard of Smulders in Hoboken, Belgium and 18 jackets are complete. 4 jackets are loaded out at the Smulders yard and shipped to Flushing. A jacket foundation is a steelstructure of tubulars designed to support the windturbines. The height of a jacket varies between 40 and 50 m.

The pile driving works started in area B of the windfarm on Wednesday 6th of April 2011. Steel piles of 40 to 50 m are driven into the seabed by a hammer installation mounted on the jack up platform Buzzard. These so called "pin-piles" are the anchors to seal the jacket foundations into the seabed. The length of the piles depends on the soil conditions. To assure the correct locations of the piles a template is lowered onto the seabed. On Sunday August the 21st 2011 all pile driving works for the project were complete which means that 196 piles were driven into the seabed in about 4,5 months.

The jacket foundation installation for the offshore transformer station, (OTS), was executed on the 15th of August 2011.

The Heavy Lift Vessel "Rambiz" installed the first jacket foundation for the windturbines in area B on Sunday 12/06/2011 and on Tuesday 14/06/2011 this foundation was grouted to the pin-piles. On 28/09/2011, so after a period of 3,5 months, all the 24 foundations of area B were successfully installed and grouted. The Rambiz was again mobilised to start the foundations installation in area A and on 02/03/2012 2 jackets were already installed.

The 33 kV infield cables of area B, making the future connection between the wind turbines, were picked up in Karlskrona, Sweden, on the 23th of July 2011 and were transported to Zeebruge by the cable lay vessel CS Sovereign. The infield cable laying works for area B started on 12/08/11 and were completed on 3/11/2011. A cable burial vessel,called the Innovator, jetted down these cables into the seabed. Two teams of special trained people did the final hang off of the cables in the WTG foundations. The infield cables for area A are in production in Karlskrona.

The manufacturing of the 150 kV export cable is almost complete in Karlskrona, Sweden. The factory acceptance tests will be carried out on 13/03/2012. This export cable is the second connection between the windfarm and the land cables. The pick-up in the factory of this cable is planned on 15/03/2012. The mobilisation of the cable lay vessel "Stemat Spirit" has started.

A dredging vessel, the "Breughel", finished the dredging in the shipping lane "Vaargeul 1", to prepare part of the trench for the 150 kV export cable, which trajectory is crossing this shipping lane.

All the preparations started for the upcoming transport of the Offshore Transformer Station to the Thorntonbank site on the 15th of March 2012. The OTS will be loaded out on the transportation barge this week at Schiedam.

Following productions for the wind turbines are ongoing: the towers by AMBAU-Cuxhaven Germany, the blades by LM Glasfiber Holding Denmark, the generators by VEM Germany and the gearboxes by 2 constructors, WINERGY-Vörde Germany and HANSEN-Belgium. The onshore offloading, assembling and loading site for the windturbine components of REpower in the harbour of Ostend is ready to receive the wind turbine components. The first set of blades arrived on the onshore site of Ostend on 2/03/2012 and the first batch with 3 towers, hubs and nacelles on 7/03/2012.

Directional drillings were executed on land for the 150 kV land cables and the cable laying onshore is complete. These cables make the connection between the offshore windfarm and the sub-station of Elia onshore. The connections of the cables into the Elia sub-station are complete. Electrical commissioning tests on the complete onshore cable connections are successfully completed.

The horizontal directional drilling under the dunes for the onshore landing of the second export cable coming from the windfarm offshore transformer station has been successfully completed on 5/3/2012.


Successful completion of the directional drilling for the onshore landing of the 150 kV export cable.

Roll out of the OTS in Schiedam	Arrival in Ostend of the first batch of WTG components