Topside Hollandse Kust (north) successfully placed on jacket for TenneT
The Netherlands: The topside for the offshore transformer station Hollandse Kust (north) was successfully placed on the undercarriage (jacket).
Image source: TenneT
The Netherlands: The topside for the offshore transformer station Hollandse Kust (north) was successfully placed on the undercarriage (jacket).
This new milestone in the energy transition took place at 18.5 km off the coast of Egmond aan Zee. From next year, TenneT will bring sustainable wind energy ashore via this ‘socket at sea’.
After a brief stopover in the port of IJmuiden, the topside arrived at its destination from Hoboken, Antwerp, Belgium, on 3 September.
“We had to wait until the installation vessel Orion was available and weather and tidal conditions offered us a favourable time window,” Guus Siteur, offshore platform project manager on behalf of TenneT, informed.
Next month, TenneT will also test the fibre-optic connection, which has been laid together with the sea cables. It can then be commissioned to control the unmanned socket at sea.
The sea cables for ‘north’ are already ready in the seabed. Behind the dunes near Heemskerk/Wijk aan Zee, these will be connected to the cables that will soon feed the power into the HV substation along the A9 in Beverwijk. In the coming weeks, the cables for (West Alpha) will also be laid at a safe depth in the seabed.
Each of TenneT’s outlets at sea is deployed as a ‘Maritime Information Service Point’ for Rijkswaterstaat. This monitoring station includes radars, meteorological systems (for wind, precipitation, clouds and temperature) and ecological monitoring systems for birds and bats, for example.
In total, the EQUANS / Smulders combination is building three topsides for TenneT. After ‘north’, ‘west Alpha’ will follow in 2023 and ‘west Beta’ in 2025. From the eponymous wind farms, the grid operator will make sustainably generated electricity available to households, businesses and industry via these sockets (together accounting for 2.1 GW) in the coming years.
Source: TenneT
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