Dong Energy has provided a £21.8m contract to J Murphy and Sons for construction of an onshore substation for the Race Bank offshore wind farm in UK.
The onshore substation will be constructed near the National Grid Walpole Substation.
The substation construction work is expected to be completed in 2016.
The substation will include all necessary equipment required to transmit power from the offshore wind farm to the national grid network.
A week ago, marine contractor Jan de Nul was hired by Dong Energy to lay the export cable linking the wind farm to the UK grid.
“The 580 MW Race Bank is an exciting project with the potential to power over 400,000 UK homes, and it’s great to sign this agreement with Jan De Nul Group for the installation of export cables,” says Dong Energy program director Thomas Karst.
The Race Bank project is a new challenge for Jan De Nul Group and it needs utmost skill in developing new methods and designing advanced specific subsea tools to execute the tasks, considering the environmental challenges.
Jan De Nul will carry out laying and burial of a total of 148km of NKT-supplied subsea export cables between landfall and the wind farm well as interlinking the development’s offshore substations.
In addition, the cable-lay will be challenging as it crosses three installation systems.
The new cable installation vessel, Isaac Newton, will challenge the current industry standards for the supply and installation of long length cables, according to sources.
Race Bank, being built in water depths down to 25 meters some 32 km off the coast of Norfolk, is expected online by 2018.
Dong is deliberating over a choice of turbine in the 7-8MW class with mono pile foundations.
Recently, MHI Vestas signed a deal with Dong Energy for supplying wind turbines for the initial phase of Walney extension offshore wind farm in U.K.
Under the deal, MHI Vestas will supply V164-8.0 MW wind turbines for phase 1 of the offshore project.
The project will be completed in two phases, comprising of 330 MW of capacity each.
Sabeena Wahid
[email protected]