Subsea 7 and Dutch contractor Seaway Heavy Lifting are to work together on the Beatrice offshore wind farm.
The wind farm, operated by SSE, was given the green light today, and has been described as one of the largest private investments made in Scottish infrastructure. Work at an onshore operations and maintenance facility and on transmission works will start this year with offshore construction starting in 2017.
Subsea 7 and Seaway will work together to engineering and install the turbine jacket foundations and array cables on the wind farm, in the Outer Moray Firth, Scotland. The pair will also transport and install two offshore transmission modules. Nexans has been contracted to provide the export cable and Siemens will install and commission the 84, 7MW wind turbines on the park.
The contract was awarded by Beatrice Offshore Windfarm, 40% owned by SSE, and is worth more than US$1.3 billion. Subsea 7 is a 50% shareholder in Seaway Heavy Lifting. The Beatrice wind park will generate 588 MW of power once it is fully operational in 2019.
Project management and engineering has already started at Seaway Heavy Lifting’s offices in Glasgow, Scotland, and Zoetermeer, the Netherlands, and at Subsea 7’s office in Aberdeen, Scotland.
Offshore installation activities will be in 2017 and 2018 using Seaway Heavy Lifting’s heavy-lift vessels, Stanislav Yudin and Oleg Strashnov.
Jean Cahuzac, Subsea 7 CEO, said: “This offshore wind farm project is our largest North Sea award to date. Subsea 7 and Seaway Heavy Lifting have a strong reputation in their respective areas of expertise. This contract recognizes both companies’ capability to execute contracts safely, on time and within cost targets and is another major step forward in establishing Seaway Heavy Lifting as a leading EPCI contractor in the offshore renewables market.”