March, 2020 — The two substations for the SeaMade offshore wind farm have been successfully installed in the Belgian North Sea. This installation marks a major milestone in the construction of Belgium’s largest offshore wind farm.
Otary RS NV, Electrabel and Eneco are developing the offshore wind farms Mermaid and Seastar, collectively known as the SeaMade project. The Mermaid and Seastar fields are respectively the northernmost and central concessions of the Belgian offshore energy zone. Both offshore wind farms combined have a total capacity of 487 MW, spread over 58 wind turbine generators and will provide 485000 families with green energy. On behalf of DEME Offshore, Scaldis was responsible for the transport and installation of the Mermaid & Seastar Offshore substations.
Efficiency driven transportation concept
Having installed six offshore substations in the Belgium North Sea, Scaldis developed a new record-breaking transportation concept for the two 1200-ton topsides. We were able to improve our record due to the new in-house developed Transportation/Installation method. Both topsides where pick-up by our crane vessel in a sheltered port and seafastened on deck. A modular seafastening was designed and built to transport the topside partially suspended in the main cranes to the SeaMade offshore wind farm. The load was maintained into the cranes during transport to optimize the lean and cost-effective seafasting configuration. This innovative method eliminated the endeavor of mooring, offshore barge and the need of auxiliary tugs.
