Ørsted Hires Aqualis for Geotech Job on US Offshore Wind Farm

Aqualis Offshore, a sister company to Offshore Wind Consultants (OWC), has been awarded a contract by Ørsted (formerly DONG Energy) to provide geotechnical site investigation supervision services at the Ocean Wind offshore wind farm.

The contract also includes an option to provide similar geotechnical services at the Bay State Wind farm, which is jointly developed by Ørsted and Eversource.

The contract values are undisclosed.

Ocean Wind is a 160,480 acre offshore wind farm, located approximate 10 nautical miles off the coast of Atlantic City, New Jersey.

The main scope of work is to provide supervision services for the geotechnical campaign and thereby support the further development of the site.

“We have supported numerous Ørsted offshore wind farm projects in Europe, but this is our first project win in US waters. Reconnaissance level site survey has been carried out during summer of 2017, and we will now support the geotechnical investigation on site. Our team who is represented by employees both from our US Aqualis Offshore and UK OWC offices, will bring extensive experience in offshore ground investigation both from the European and North Sea offshore wind sector, and the US oil and gas sector,” says Ian Bonnon, managing director of OWC, which is part of Oslo-listed energy consultancy group Aqualis ASA. “We will be project managing the work out of our Aqualis Offshore’s Houston office.”

Aqualis Offshore’s contract also has an option for the provision of geotechnical site investigations support at the proposed Bay State Wind offshore wind farm. This wind farm is to be located approximately 15-25 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard in an area that has the potential to develop at least 2,000 megawatts of electricity. Ørsted and Eversource expect that first power can be delivered in the early 2020s.