INSTALLATION OF WIND TURBINES UNDERWAY AT WORLD’S LARGEST OFFSHORE WIND FARM

The campaign to install the first of 277 turbines at the world’s largest offshore wind farm is underway, marking a major advance in the industry and speeding up the transition to a cleaner, more secure energy system.
The 260m tall turbines – which are almost twice the height of the London Eye – will be installed c.80 miles off the coast of Yorkshire using a specialist vessel, the ‘Voltaire’, with a lifting capacity of 3,200 tonnes, the largest of its kind in the world.
The scale of Dogger Bank Wind Farm is immense, occupying an area almost as large as Greater London, on seabed that once formed a land bridge between the UK and Europe. When fully complete it will have an installed capacity of 3.6GW of renewable electricity – more than two and a half times the size of the next largest offshore wind farm – and be capable of producing enough clean energy to power the equivalent of 6 million homes annually.
The commencement of the campaign to install GE Renewable Energy’s 13MW Haliade-X turbines, one of the largest and most powerful in the world, is a pivotal moment for the landmark project, which is being developed and built by the UK developer SSE Renewables in a joint venture with Norway’s Equinor and Vårgrønn (a joint venture by Eni Plenitude and Hitec Vision).
The installation vessel, Jan de Nul’s Voltaire, is the largest offshore jack-up installation vessel ever built and is the first ultra-low emission ship of its kind.
(Source and image: Dogger Bank Wind Farm – Installation jackup Voltaire)