The Humber’s latest offshore wind farm is now being built off the region’s coastline. Those behind Triton Knoll are eyeing up an August 2021 completion, having put the first foundation and bright yellow transition piece in the water, swiftly followed by several more this past month.
Turbine supplier MHI Vestas Offshore Wind’s commissioning manager, Matthew Paterson, gave an update at a joint Renewable海角视频 and Grimsby Renewables Partnership event, with David Laister there.
Early next year the Energy Estuary will have yet another offshore wind record to rightly crow about. From 20 miles off the Lincolnshire coast, Innogy’s Triton Knoll is emerging, and 2021 will see the deployment of the most powerful proven turbine in the market, operated and maintained from Grimsby.
With Orsted’s title of world’s largest offshore wind farm about to be officially received when commissioning completes, it will be another alluring credential. It also shows just how quickly the industry is scaling up,
Five years ago, Westermost Rough, located a little closer to the East Yorkshire coast, brought a global first with Siemens Gamesa’s 6MW turbine. More than 50 per cent capacity has now been added.
Mr Paterson, who originally came to Grimsby with E.on’s Humber Gateway, and has recently been on a European project, said: “The new turbine is the V164 9.5MW. It is currently the most powerful proven turbine on the market, with a swept distance double the London Eye.
“You see them in fields, onshore, but this is twice the height of the Statue of Liberty, which just shows how big these turbines now are offshore.”
Each turn covers 21,124 sq m, compared to the famous ferris wheel’s 11,310 sq m - and try telling anyone atop of that it pales in comparison.
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There will be 90 turbines on the Triton Knoll project, with two offshore substations currently being built in Antwerp, arriving next month.
“It will feature 12 strings of eight or nine turbines, and we install them with that methodology so we can energise different strings once they complete,” Mr Paterson said.
“We will take five turbines at a time, with an 8.3 day rotation to install, that’s 14 load-outs, with a 100 mile sail to site, from pre-assembly at Able Seaton. The completion harbour and operations and maintenance base is at Grimsby, in the Royal Dock.”
While pre-assembly wasn’t always going to be the 海角视频, it had for a time looked likely to be the Humber, mirroring activity at Green Port Hull. Able Marine Energy Park at North Killingholme had been the publicised plan, but the stars - or rather projects - didn’t align, quite possibly because of delays brought on by the ‘Killingholme Triangle’ legal battle with ABP, with port competition coming at a cost.
“We are going to be creating 40 to 50 direct and indirect jobs at Seaton, we will manage all the logistics and pre-assembly activity,” Mr Paterson said.
“The turbines are now designed as a plug and play system. We put the turbines together onshore as much as possible, as the least we can do offshore the better. Working there is clearly more expensive. This all comes back to a reduction in cost, we have learned this from experience. We move it back as far as possible, even to the factory. It is all about the quality of work and the safety involved.”
Blades, built on the Isle of Wight, will be shipped up to Teesside in a co-ordinated programme, where they will be united with tower and nacelle, with the latter manufactured in Denmark.
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“November will see the first delivery to pre-assembly, with installation at the start of January,” Mr Paterson said of the top-side builds that follow the foundation package currently being deployed.
“We will look at completion of the first turbine two or three days later, with overall completion at the end of August. Then there is a five year service agreement - with a 97 per cent availability target, and we perform higher than that.”
MVOW is a joint venture between Vestas and Mitsubishi, launched in 2014 with 400 employees. Now there are over 3,000, and still mainly in Europe. “We design, manufacture and install, then service the turbines and it is a true collaborative approach, we like creating strong partnerships with stakeholders, customers and suppliers in the industry,” he said. “In the 海角视频 we have got 800 staff, it is a key market, and we have got lots of sites around the 海角视频 – Triton Knoll and Moray Firth and two pre-assembly sites that we have not had on the mainland before, which is positive.
“Offshore wind is growing massively at the moment, we have manufacturing facilities in Denmark and the 海角视频, we have a base in Boston - our US hub - and we are expanding to Asia, with projects in Japan and Taiwan. From a supply chain point of view there are lots of opportunities globally now.”
Turning to the port base, he said: “Three service operation vessels will be in use, with support of the crew transfer vessels. There will be Innogy’s for construction work, my SOV for construction work then, from the middle of (next) March, a service SOV too. Traffic in the port will vastly increase, especially when you get other wind farm SOVs too.”
A note of regret was sounded on Able Marine Energy Park’s fallow state still.
Peder Christensen, installation manager for Innogy, responded to a question about the site, where it had been hoped 4,000 jobs would be created by accommodating several equipment manufacturers. The ‘big space in the right place’ is the last undeveloped deep water access point on the estuary and has recently been brought forward as a fifth port proposal in North Lincolnshire’s industrial strategy, no doubt with eyes on a freeport opportunity post-Brexit too.
Mr Christensen, who brought the first turbines to the Humber with Centrica in the late Noughties, said: “It was heavily involved in ports selection, and for a long time we planned to use a European port. We worked very hard with Able to try and utilise the Able Marine Energy Park but we couldn’t do it on our own and there was not enough support to kick off the development. That was by far our preference, it just couldn’t be materialised. We tried with some of the other developers, Orsted and others, but they didn’t come together in time.
“As we were already in dialogue with Able, and with another port on the East Coast not too far away, with a lot of collaboration with MVOW it has been done and we have got this (Seaton) to happen and have a healthier business case too.
“We are very pleased it could stay in the 海角视频 for Triton Knoll project. It is not far from Holland or Belgium, which does this a lot, we even considered Esbjerg - a famous port for the load-out of turbines. We are very pleased we are here and there are lots of benefits for further projects - the whole Dogger Bank area and more projects coming down this way. We are very pleased we helped kick it off.”