With all five steel jacket foundations fully installed at the Block Island Wind Farm (BIWF) site, Deepwater Wind officially completed the first offshore construction season for America’s first offshore wind farm.
The last deck platform was placed on top of a foundation on 21 November and all of the construction and crew vessels associated with the operation have now demobilized from the site.
The focus this winter and spring now turns to turbine assembly and submarine cable installation work, the developer said. Submarine cable installation is scheduled to begin in the spring of 2016, with erection of the five offshore wind turbines set for the summer of 2016. The project is scheduled to be in-service and generating power in the fourth quarter of 2016.
Deepwater Wind CEO Jeffrey Grybowski, said: “We are proud of the work we’ve accomplished so far, but we’ve only just begun – and 2016 will be a year to remember.”
Deepwater Wind and General Electric are establishing a new temporary manufacturing facility at the Port of Providence for the assembly of turbine components. GE, which recently completed its acquisition of Alstom’s offshore wind unit, is supplying the 6MW Haliade offshore wind turbines for the Block Island Wind Farm.
Over the next six months, GE will install the critical electrical, mechanical, and safety equipment within the bottom tower sections now at ProvPort, with the remaining tower sections arriving in Rhode Island next year.
The assembly activities at ProvPort will complement construction and staging work completed at Quonset Point, in North Kingstown, R.I. Fabrication of some of the foundation components was completed by local welders at Quonset’s Specialty Diving Services in early 2015, and the port continues to host construction work and vessel staging for the wind farm.
Quonset will also host the project’s long-term operations and maintenance facility.