Smulders Assembles First Beatrice Jacket

The foundations project for the Beatrice offshore wind farm has moved forward as Smulders placed the first upper jacket on top of the first lower jacket at its UK yard in Newcastle upon Tyne.

The complete jacket now has a height of approximately 70 meters.

The upper jacket parts are produced at the Smulders yards in Belgium, whereas the lower jacket parts are produced at the Smulders Projects UK yard.

Seaway Heavy Lifting, a Subsea 7 company in charge of the engineering, procurement, construction and installation of the turbine foundations and array cables, awarded Smulders Projects the contract for 28 Beatrice jacket foundations. Bladt and BiFab will fabricate the remaining 30 and 26 jackets for this project.

Offshore installation activities are scheduled to be executed in 2017 and 2018 using Seaway Heavy Lifting’s heavy lift vessels, Stanislav Yudin and Oleg Strashnov.

The Beatrice wind farm will comprise 84 Siemens turbines with a total capacity of 588MW. The wind farm will be located in the Outer Moray Firth, off the north coast of Scotland and will produce enough energy for approximately 470,000 homes.

The offshore wind farm is expected to become fully operational in 2019.