At the beginning of April, Seaway Heavy Lifting’s vessel Oleg Strashnov will install the 4,000-tonne Arkona topside onto its jacket foundation.
STX France sent off the substation from its yard in Saint Nazaire to the German Baltic Sea three days after the jacket. The topside will travel to its destination site for around two weeks. On its journey, the substation will pass through the Bay of Biscay, then over the English Channel into the North Sea, and past the northern end of Denmark through Skagerrak and Kattegat to the construction site 35 kilometers northeast of German island of Rügen.
According to E.ON, Oleg Strashnov is currently the largest crane vessel available in the Baltic Sea and, by taking the topside from the barge to place it on top of the foundation, it will carry out the installation of the heaviest AC platform ever built in a single block.
The substation will collect the power generated by the turbines and transfer it to 50Hertz’s onshore substation in Lubmin via the 93-kilometre Ostwind 1 cable system. The offshore platform will be used simultaneously by the wind farm and the power grid operator 50Hertz.
Comprising 60 Siemens Gamesa wind turbines of the 6MW class, the EUR 1.2 billion offshore wind farm will have an output of 385MW and, from 2019 onwards, will be able to supply about 400,000 households with renewable energy.