Powering wind

Meg Chesshyre speaks with HSM Offshore as the company looks to the offshore wind market while the oil industry downturn continues.

The Horns Rev C offshore high voltage substation. Photo from HSM Offshore.

During the current slowdown in offshore oil and gas activity, HSM Offshore, in Schiedam, Netherlands, is focusing on fabricating high voltage substations, says Jaco Fleumer, business development manager for the yard. This is a market which HSM first entered in 2002, providing the very first offshore Horns Rev A substation, and a second one, Horns Rev B, in 2008. Most recently, in April this year, HSM delivered the 1800-tonne Horns Rev C sub-station to Denmark’s Energinet.dk. It was installed by Seaway Heavy Lifting’s StanislavYudin and commissioning is ongoing.

“We still see a growth in the size and weight of the platforms and support structures,” Fleumer says. This means that each project provides a larger work scope. The yard’s latest award in this arena is for a jacket and topsides for DONG Energy’s German sector, 450MW Borkum Riffgrund 2 project, comprising a topside weight of 2500-tonne, compared with 1800-tonne for Horns Rev C, and an 1800-tonne jacket. Installation will be by Heerema Marine Contractors.

This new award represents a double first for the yard; its first contract for DONG Energy and its first contract in the German sector. Borkum Riffgrund 2 is due for delivery in 1H 2018, which means that the yard still has work for the next one and half to two years. It is also good to have as a reference both because DONG Energy is currently the most active developer in the wind farm market, with access to increased resources now that its IPO has been completed, and because the German sector, along with the UK, is one of the most active wind farm markets.

HSM also has a sub-contract from Babcock Marine for the procurement and construction of a 1050-tonne jacket for the Rampion Offshore Wind Farm offshore high voltage substation, south of Brighton on the southern coast of the UK. The capacity of the wind farm is 400MW. Twelve J-tubes for incoming array cables and two J-tubes for export cables are included in the design. The jacket is already standing outside the fabrication hall nearing completion and is on target for sailaway September 2016.

Looking ahead, there is plenty of activity coming up in the Dutch sector. The Dutch Wind Energy Roadmap, drawn up as part of the country’s Energy Agreement signed in 2013, sets out how offshore wind energy generation capacity is to be increased in the sector from 1000MW to 4500MW in 2023. Tendering is already under way for the Borssele I wind farm with Borssele II as an option.

Fleumer says that HSM Offshore will certainly not lose focus on the oil and gas market, but “what we currently see in the North Sea is still quite a distance away from moving into the fabrication phase.” HSM’s most recent EPCI delivery was the Dutch sector A18 satellite platform for Petrogas last October, comprising a 950-tonne topsides facility and a 1250-tonne jacket.

As OE went to press, Fleumer said he was hoping to be in a position to announce the award of another minimum facility platform. It is important for HSM, not so much for the size of the project, but for the company still to be involved in the oil and gas business, when the market recovers. In the long-term, he foresees future projects will mainly feature further minimum facility satellite platforms, with the new breed of independents working on the basis of letting EPCI to fabricators such as themselves. This is a particular area of expertise for HSM offering the most added value for the yard.