Wind
Dong chief executive Anders Eldrup at Grenaa Harbour, which will be the company's operations and maintenance base for Anholt Photograph: Dong Energy In Depth: Time is tight as Dong ramps up offshore at Anholt
Dong Energy is ramping up construction of its offshore wind portfolio, starting building work on the 400MW Anholt project in Denmark and the UK’s 389MW West of Duddon Sands.
Not long after that, it will begin on Germany’s 320MW Borkum Riffgrund.
The Danish developer sees Anholt as a test of how far it has got in terms of applying its growing know-how in offshore projects and streamlining installation, given the tight time frame set out in its concession from the Danish government.
“The project is quite challenging,” Dong Renewables vice-president Christina Grumstrup tells Recharge. “Under the terms of the agreement, we can only use 88sq km of the total area, and parts of the seabed are too soft, so you can’t put anything into it and sometimes have to go somewhere else.”
As part of the construction, Dong will be moving about 5,000 rocks, creating new reefs in the process. It is also using a novel layout for the project’s 111 turbines, to minimise wake effects.
The timetable foresees Anholt being commissioned by the end of 2013 — “an unofficial world record from starting to plan to installing monopiles”, according to Grumstrup.
Dong was granted the concession in the summer of 2010. The first monopiles are being installed and turbines will start to be erected by the end of the year, when the first power will be generated.
The monopiles are being installed by Ballast Nedam’s Svanen and the transition pieces by the heavy-lift vessel Jumbo Javelin. A2SEA’s Sea Power will install the Siemens 3.6MW turbines for four to five months from September, and Sea Worker will install turbines from December for four months. A2SEA’s flagship Sea Installer, currently being commissioned in China, will arrive at the site at the beginning of February 2013 — when Sea Power has carried out about 50 installations — and work there for a further two months.
Grumstrup says Sea Installer will make a “huge difference”, with its capacity to operate in wave heights of 1.5 metres, compared with other vessels’ 1.2 metres, and the fact that it does not need to be towed by a tug, allowing it to move in and out of harbour faster.
Installing the recently completed Walney 1 and 2 UK offshore wind farms (with a combined capacity of 367.2MW) has been a key experience in preparing the company for completing Anholt within the deadline.
“This is almost like a factory that we are moving,” she says. “We are using the same configurations and the same vessel to install array cables as in Walney.”
After initial hiccups as it adapted to running its biggest ever vessels — and changes made at the Port of Barrow, northwest England — installation rates speeded up significantly, allowing Dong to build Walney 2 in a record five months and 13 days.
Now it is building at full stretch. As well as its involvement in the 630MW first stage of London Array, it has begun onshore construction for West of Duddon Sands, where it is a partner with ScottishPower.
It will begin offshore construction early next year, using the same Siemens 3.6MW turbines as Walney, Anholt and London Array. Operations will be based at Barrow, “so this will be like coming home”, says Grumstrup.
Dong also plans to start building Borkum Riffgrund in late 2013 or early 2014, while ABB is already constructing the DolWin1 hub, which will connect the project to shore using a high-voltage direct-current line. Dong says it does not expect the kind of grid connection problems that are threatening to cause long delays to the HelWin1 and BorWin2 hubs.
Further on, the company has a growing list of projects in development. These include the UK’s recently consented Westermost Rough project and two Round 3 projects in the Hornsea zone— Njord and Heron Wind — in which it bought stakes late last year from the SMart Wind consortium.
It is also part of a consortium with EDF Energies Nouvelles and Alstom that bid for four projects in the French offshore tender this month.
The company is looking at the next generation of turbines for many of these projects. It has agreements with Vestas for its Frederikshavn testing site in Denmark, and aims to install Siemens’ 6MW and Vestas’ 7MW machines at the Gunfleet Sands 3 demonstration site.
The exact configuration for Gunfleet Sands 3 needs to be worked out, “but this is super-exciting”, says Grumstrup. “Hopefully these will be the cornerstone of the next wave of industrialised projects, with turbines that are bigger without adding much weight.”
Published: Monday, January 30 2012 copy http://www.rechargenews.com/
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