Key facts:
- SeaMade NV is responsible for the simultaneous development of both the Mermaid and Seastar offshore wind farms, resulting in the single largest wind farm financed and built in Belgium. SeaMade is a partnership between Otary, ENGIE Electrabel and Eneco Wind Belgium.
- SeaMade NV reached Financial Close on 3 December 2018, and meanwhile manufacturing of structural assets is ongoing.
- Installation of the first Monopile-foundations is scheduled as of the summer 2019 onwards.
- SeaMade will build 58 wind turbines with a total capacity of 487 MW and will connect to Elia’s Modular Offshore Grid through two offshore substations.
- SeaMade represents the largest contribution to Belgium’s renewable energy development objectives. As of 2020, SeaMade will deliver renewable energy to 485,000 households, also allowing for a reduction of nearly 700,000 tons of CO2 emissions per year.
European Offshore Wind deal of the year
During IJGlobal’s annual awards ceremony, held this year at the Natural History Museum in London, SeaMade was presented with the award for European Offshore Wind deal of the year. The swift and efficient financing process, whereby Financial Close was reached in a record-breaking period of two and a half months did not go unnoticed by the international finance community. In addition, SeaMade was praised for its determined and focused approach, bringing a de-risked project to the market and leveraging on the experience gained with developing and financing previous offshore wind projects.
The project is financed by an international lending consortium consisting of the European Investment Bank (providing a commitment via the European Fund for Strategic Investments, the so called EFSI or Junker Plan), the Danish export credit agency EKF and 15 commercial banks, including Belgian, Dutch, French, German, Chinese, Japanese and Spanish banks.
Project particularities
Construction of the project has already been initiated with ongoing geophys activities and manufacturing of structural assets. Offshore construction works are scheduled to start in summer 2019 and both wind farms are planned to be operational before end of 2020.
The 58 offshore wind turbines will be installed and maintained by Siemens Gamesa, using DEME’s brand new installation vessel ‘Apollo’. Meanwhile, production of the transition pieces at SIF (Roermond, NL) has started and the same goes for the offshore substation decks at the Smulders yard in Hoboken (BE).
The monopile foundations are scheduled to be installed as from August 2019 onwards using the ‘Innovation’ installation vessel. The offshore substations and export cables will be installed in Q1/Q2 2020 by respectively the heavy lifting vessel ‘Gulliver’ (topsides), ‘Innovation’ (topside foundations) and ‘Livingstone’ (export cable). Turbines will be installed in Q3/Q4 2020 to be operational before year end 2020.
