CrossWind, the developer of the 759MW Hollandse Kust Noord offshore wind farm, has announced the installation of the first wind turbine at the project in the Dutch waters of the North Sea.
A joint venture of Shell and Eneco, CrossWind expects the first power from the wind farm to be generated by the summer of 2023 with full operations under way by the end of the year.
The Hollandse Kust Noord offshore wind farm will generate a minimum of 3.3TWh of clean energy annually, sufficient to meet 2.8% of the Netherlands’ electricity demand.
To be located 18.5km off the western cost of the Netherlands near the town of Egmond aan Zee, the wind farm will be powered by 69 Siemens Gamesa SG 11.0-200 DD 11MW turbines.
Siemens Gamesa was awarded a 15-year service and maintenance contract.
Along with Van Oord, Siemens Gamesa is installing the wind turbines using offshore installation vessel Scylla for transportation and installation work. The Scylla sailed with the first turbine from Eemshaven to the wind farm site in early April, and installation was completed on 15 April.
The turbines will have a rotor diameter of 200m and each of the blades is 97m long.
CrossWind wind turbine generator package manager Stefan Hartman said: “First the tower is installed on the monopile, then the nacelle on top of the tower. Then come the blades, which are usually the most critical lift with respect to weather conditions.
“Blade installation will commence if there is a sufficiently long time window of windspeeds below 12m per second [m/s]. For comparison, 12m/s is a windspeed at which it becomes hard to hold an umbrella.”
Installation work on the monopile foundations that support the wind turbines was completed in February 2023. Each of the foundations weighs between 788t and 960t.
