MORAY Offshore Windfarm (East) has welcomed the arrival of Offshore Heavy Transport’s (OHT) vessel ‘Hawk’ at Global Energy’s facility at the Port of Nigg.
The vessel arrived with nine wind turbine and one offshore substation platform substructures or ‘jackets’, each standing 75m-80m high. The jackets will be offloaded at Nigg, where they will undergo final preparations before they are loaded onto the jack-up vessel ‘Seajacks Scylla’, which will undertake their installation at sea, more than 25km from shore in the Moray Firth.
Moray East has appointed a consortium of DEME and Smulders for designing, manufacturing and installing the jackets. In turn, Global Energy has been subcontracted to provide facilities at the Port of Nigg to support the installation works, and Offshore Heavy Transport (OHT) has been subcontracted for shipping vessel provision. Seajacks Ltd has been subcontracted for installation vessel provision.
The Port of Nigg and the Port of Cromarty Firth are currently providing onshore facilities from which the offshore installation work will be undertaken. A total of 103 jackets are being installed in the Moray Firth to provide foundations for 100 offshore wind turbine generators and three offshore substation platforms.
To get the electricity onshore, three subsea cables will be laid to connect the three offshore substations with underground onshore cables at Inverboyndie, and then on to the new substation currently under construction south of New Deer, which will make the power generated available to consumers via the National Grid.
Moray East project director Marcel Sunier said, “The arrival of these impressive structures at the Port of Nigg gives a striking understanding of the scale of the project which is being undertaken in the Moray Firth and the benefit this brings to the local community. Because we are able to work at such large scale that we have been able to make significant cost reductions in the cost of produced power. The Moray East offshore wind farm will make a major contribution to the post Covid recovery producing plentiful low-cost, low carbon power.”
