Van Oord has been contracted by Seaway 7 to install scour protection around the 114 wind turbine foundations at the Seagreen offshore wind farm. Once completed, Seagreen will be Scotland’s biggest, and the world’s deepest fixed bottom offshore wind farm.
The 1.1 GW Seagreen project is located 27 kilometres off the coast of Angus in Scotland. The wind farm will feature 114 Vestas V164-10.0 MW turbines. The turbines will be installed on three-legged jacket foundations. Seaway 7 was selected to install the inter-array cables and foundations for the wind farm in June 2020. After the installation of these jackets, scour protection is required to avoid the effects of erosion. This is achieved by high precision rock installation around the jackets.
Fallpipe vessels Bravenes & Nordnes
For this specific project, which started at the end of October 2021, Van Oord is deploying their high dynamic flexible fallpipe vessel Bravenes. This vessel has a unique method for subsea rock installation thanks to the automated fallpipe system that can be skidded over the side of the vessel. This results in highly accurate and efficient rock installation in close vicinity to the jacket foundations using a powerful Remote Operating Vehicle (ROV).
In addition, flexible fallpipe vessel Nordnes will be deployed to install scour protection on several cable crossings. All subsea activities will take place in water depths of up to 50 metres.
Seagreen Offshore Wind Farm is a project by SSE Renewables (49%) and TotalEnergies (51%). It will provide enough clean, renewable energy to power the equivalent of 1.6 million homes. Image: Van Oord
