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Recently, Ørsted has awarded Jan De Nul Group, a Belgian offshore construction and dredging company, an export cable contract for its 2.9 GW Hornsea 3 offshore wind project in the United Kingdom. Jan De Nul is expected to be in the role of preparing the seabed, transporting, installing, and protecting the 350 km of DC export cables that connect the wind farm to the UK electrical grid.
The Hornsea 3 offshore wind farm is situated 160 km off the Yorkshire coast in the United Kingdom. This is expected to be the world's largest standalone offshore wind farm. The project has a capacity of 2.9 GW, boosting the overall capacity of the Hornsea offshore wind zone to an astonishing 5.4 GW. With up to 200 wind turbines Hornsea 3 will generate enough renewable electricity to supply 3.3 million British households.
Ørsted's Hornsea 3 Senior Project Director, Luke Bridgman, stated that they are excited to work with Jan de Nul on the export cable contract. "The award of this contract marks a critical milestone for Hornsea 3, as it completes our main contract awards for the world's biggest offshore gearbox system. Together with our contractor partners Aibel, Hitachi, NKT, Volker Fitzpatrick, and AMS No-Dig, we will create an extraordinary system that will bring 2.9 GW of green energy to the UK."
Hornsea 3 will offer up to 5,000 employees during construction, with an additional 1,200 permanent jobs provided directly and through the supplier chain over the extended operational phase. Hornsea 3 will be operated from Ørsted's Grimsby hub.
Jan De Nul Group intends to deploy several vessels to install and secure DC export cables. cable-laying vessels Isaac Newton, and Connector will carry out and install the cables. Several burial techniques will be utilised to safeguard the cables, including the rock-installation vessel Simon Stevin, which will place up to 150,000 tonnes of rock to shield the cables.
"We are proud to support Ørsted in building the world's largest individual offshore wind farm by connecting 2.9 GW of renewable energy capacity to the UK's national grid," said Wouter Vermeersch, manager of offshore cables at Jan De Nul Group. Our relationship with Ørsted, including recent projects like the monopile installations for Gode Wind 3 and Borkum Riffgrund 3 in Germany, allows us to continue creating the energy transition together.
The development will begin in 2025 and is projected to be finished in early 2027. At the beginning of last year, Ørsted awarded Denmark's NKT a supply agreement for the export power cable system for Hornsea 3. The infrastructure contains two circuits with a route length of about 170 kilometres of 320 kV DC offshore cable and 50 kilometres of 320 kV DC onshore cable.
Read more here- https://orsted.co.uk/media/newsroom/news/2024/01/hornsea-3-export-cable
