Heerema to provide transportation and installation for Hornsea 3 power units
Norwegian contractor Aibel has won contracts worth more than a combined Nkr5 billion ($488 million) for the engineering, procurement, construction and installation of two high-voltage direct current (HVDC) converter platforms for Orsted’s Hornsea 3 offshore wind farm in the UK North Sea.
The two platforms will have combined capacity of up to 2.852 gigawatts to serve the turbines at Hornsea 3, hailed as the single largest offshore wind zone in the world.
It is expected to produce enough energy to meet the average daily needs of more than 3 million UK homes, Aibel noted.
The two unmanned platforms, Hornsea 3 Link 1 and 2, will be operated from shore and accessed for maintenance by a service vessel or helicopter.
The Hornsea 3 project will be headed from Aibel’s Oslo office and the topsides for the two platforms will be built at its yard in Thailand.
The topsides will then be transported to Haugesund, Norway, and outfitted with Hitachi Energy’s HVDC converter valves before final completion and commissioning.
“We have worked closely with our partner Hitachi Energy on several projects now, and our teams in Norway and Thailand have done a tremendous job on previous and ongoing offshore wind projects. Therefore, I’m confident that we will succeed with our proven concept and delivery model,” Aibel executive vice president for offshore wind Nick Routledge said.
The topsides for the Hornsea 3 Link 1 platform is scheduled to arrive in Haugesund in the first quarter of 2025 and sailaway to the Hornsea field is expected in 2026.
“We are proud and honoured to enter into a new collaboration with Orsted — a relationship that has matured over the last 36 months. With this award, we once again consolidate our position as a leading supplier of HVDC solutions in the European offshore wind segment,” Aibel chief executive Mads Andersen said.
Aibel has employed Heerema Marine Contractors to transport and install the two offshore converter stations (OCS) for Hornsea 3.
In 2021, Dutch contractor Heerema completed the installation of Orsted’s Hornsea 2 offshore substations. Its latest award will include the transportation and installation of the two Hornsea 3 OCS jackets, eight skirt piles and the two OCS topsides.
Heerema chief commercial officer Jeroen van Oosten said: “We are very pleased to be awarded this contract. We have established a good working relationship throughout various successful projects together, which we will now extend to the transport and installation of these two substations.”
Hornsea 3 is Orsted’s third project in the Hornsea Zone, where Hornsea 1 is operational and Hornsea 2 is nearing operation.
“The Orsted vision is a world that runs entirely on green energy and the Hornsea projects are a significant step towards this goal in the UK,” Orsted vice president Programme UK Patrick Harnett said.
“Together with Aibel, we are demonstrating that renewables like offshore wind are a huge part of the world’s sustainability journey. Hornsea 3 will not just provide low cost, clean energy for millions of homes in the UK, it will also deliver thousands of high-quality jobs and billions of pounds of investment in the offshore wind supply chain in the UK and beyond,” Harnett said.
Aibel has four HVDC converter platforms under construction — one for the Dolwin 5 project off the German coast, and three platforms for the Dogger Bank offshore wind farm in the UK sector of the North Sea. With this latest addition to Aibel’s offshore wind portfolio, green energy projects make up a substantial part of the company’s order backlog.
“With the award of Hornsea 3, we accelerate our transformation towards renewables and low-carbon solutions. Our order backlog now holds about 60% related to offshore wind and electrification of energy infrastructure,” Andersen said.
Hornsea 3, which will include up to 231 offshore wind turbines, will be located in the North Sea about 120 kilometres off the Norfolk coast and 160 kilometres off the Yorkshire coast.
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