Van Oord wins Polish wind contract

The 1.5GW Baltica 2 offshore wind farm, forty kilometres offshore in the Polish area of the North Sea, is being developed by Ørsted and Poland’s PGE Group and will produce enough energy to power about 2.4 million households.

Van Oord will deploy the offshore installation vessel, Aeolus, and heavy-lift ship Svanen, which is to undergo a major upgrade this year. Extension of the vessel’s gantry crane will increase its lifting capacity to make it one of the world’s largest floating heavy-lift installation vessels.

The upgrade will enable the Svanen to install 111 extended monopiles for the 14MW wind turbines. The monopiles will include 107 wind turbine foundations and four offshore substation foundations. The extended monopiles consist of a traditional monopile combined with a transition piece, thereby saving the number of offshore lifting operation, increasing safety, and saving time. Van Oord’s flexible fallpipe vessel, Nordnes, will be deployed to install rock around all of the foundations.

The family-owned company has a fleet of about 60 vessels and operates on projects worldwide.