OHT’s heavy transport vessel Hawk arrived on Tuesday at Global Energy’s facility at the Port of Nigg, carrying 10 offshore wind jackets destined for the Moray East offshore wind farm, off the Aberdeenshire coast in Scotland.
The vessel arrived with nine wind turbine jackets and one offshore substation substructure, each standing 75m – 80m high.
The jackets will be offloaded at Nigg, where they will undergo the final preparations before they are loaded onto the jack-up vessel Seajacks Scylla which will undertake their installation at sea, more than 25km from shore in the Moray Firth.
Moray East has appointed a consortium of DEME and Smulders for designing, manufacturing, and installing the jackets; in turn Global Energy has been subcontracted to provide facilities at the Port of Nigg to support the installation works, and Offshore Heavy Transport (OHT) has been subcontracted for shipping vessel provision.
UK- based Seajacks Ltd has been subcontracted for installation vessel provision.
The Port of Nigg and the Port of Cromarty Firth are providing the onshore facilities from which the offshore installation work will be undertaken.
A total of 103 jackets are being installed in the Moray Firth to provide foundations for 100 offshore wind turbine generators and three offshore substation platforms.
To get the electricity to customers onshore, three subsea cables will be laid which will connect the three offshore substations with underground onshore cables at Inverboyndie, and thence to the new substation currently under construction south of New Deer, which will make the power generated available to consumers via the National Grid.
When complete the facility will be capable of meeting the needs of more than 950,000 homes.
OHT Project Manager, Egil Ismar said, "It is great to see Hawk arrive at the Port of Nigg, our third heavy transport vessel to contribute to this project. The voyage went very well and thanks to the close collaboration of all parties during the planning, loading and transportation, we are set to reach the halfway point of our role in this project on schedule.”
Global Energy Group Chairman, Roy MacGregor said, "It is our continuing desire to make The Port of Nigg an Energy HUB and I am delighted that DEME Offshore recognized that we have the facilities, experience, and skills to support them with this extremely exciting project.
“The Port of Nigg is an ideal staging port for the Moray East Project due to its deep-water access and the high ground bearing strength of its quay and storage areas. Great skill is required to safely maneuver the massive structures off the Heavy Lift Vessel and into the storage areas.
“Each structure will then be moved back to the quayside storage areas at a later date where they will be lifted onboard the installation vessel which will is already operating out of the Nigg facility. In addition, structures will also arrive at Nigg by Tug & Barge, and will be transferred to the installation vessel for offshore deployment.
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