The first of 174 monopiles has been installed at the site, located 120km off the Yorkshire coast. When operational, expected in 2020, the wind farm which is being developed by Ørsted, will produce enough power for over one million homes (based on a load factor of 42% and a household consumption of 4.1 MWh per year. Source: DECC, 2015, Average electricity consumption per UK household in 2014).
The installation is being carried out by GeoSea’s installation vessel, Innovation. It will carry up to 4 monopiles at a time. Each one is 65m long, weighs around 800t and has a diameter of 8.1m.
The Innovation vessel will then be used to install some of the transition pieces for the project, and in March will be joined by A2Sea’s vessel Sea Installer to continue with transition piece installation.
Duncan Clark, program director for the project, said, “After years of planning it is fantastic to see the initial stages of offshore construction begin. My thanks to the teams working day and night on this significant milestone.
“Onshore, we are continuing to construct the East Coast Hub which will serve as an operations and maintenance base for our existing wind farms in the area and both Hornsea Project One, and Project Two which we took a final investment decision on last year.”
The wind farm is expected to have 174 Siemens 7MW wind turbines connected to three offshore collector substations and a reactive compensation substation
