Dutch utility Eneco has announced the installation of the first wind turbine at CrossWind’s 759MW Hollandse Kust Noord offshore wind park in the Netherlands.
The Dutch offshore wind farm in the North Sea will have a total of 69 Siemens Gamesa 11.0-200 DD wind turbines. Each of the wind turbines can generate up to a capacity of 11MW.
CrossWind is a joint venture (JV) between Shell and Eneco. It won the tender for the offshore wind farm in July 2020.
The turbines will be transported and installed by Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy and Van Oord with the help of the offshore installation vessel Scylla. Van Oord holds the contract for the construction of the Dutch offshore wind farm, while Siemens Gamesa is the turbine supplier.
Eneco said that the first wind turbine was transported by Scylla last week from Eemshaven to the offshore Hollandse Kust Noord site. The turbine was placed on its foundation on 15 April 2023.
The rotor diameter of the wind turbines is 200m and the turbine blades will be 97m long.
Located nearly 18.5km off the coast of the province of North Holland, the Hollandse Kust Noord offshore wind park is anticipated to produce at least 3.3TWh of clean energy per year. This is enough to meet 2.8% of the country’s electricity demand, said Eneco.
Hollandse Kust Noord is expected to supply the first power to the Dutch grid by this summer with full operations to be achieved by the end of this year.
Currently, installation of the turbines is said to be taking place 24 hours per day and seven days per week.
CrossWind, wind turbine generator (WTG) package manager Stefan Hartman said: “First the tower is installed on the monopile, then the nacelle on top of the tower. Then come the blades, which are usually the most critical lift with respect to weather conditions.
“Blade installation will commence if there is a sufficiently long-time window of windspeeds below 12 m/s. For comparison, 12 m/s is a windspeed at which it becomes hard to hold an umbrella.”
In February 2023, Van Oord completed the installation of the final monopile at the Hollandse Kust Noord offshore wind farm.
