Jan De Nul Group has bagged an engineering, procurement, construction and installation (EPCI) contract from Parkwind for the 224MW Northwester 2 offshore wind farm off the Belgian coast.
Image: The Northwester 2 offshore wind farm will be built in Belgian waters. Photo: courtesy of Parkwind.
Under the terms of its contract, the Luxembourg-based construction engineering company will handle the design, construction and installation of 23 foundations, the transportation and installation of the cables along with the transportation and installation of the wind turbines on top of the foundations.
Jan De Nul, which will be working for the third time with Parkwind, will commence the works in June 2019.
The Belgian offshore wind farm will produce enough energy to meet the power consumption needs of 220,000 homes after becoming fully operational by 2020.
Jan De Nul Northwester 2 project manager Stan Logghe said: “Needless to say that we are very pleased with Parkwind’s confidence in our expertise.
“With this project, we will have the honour of being the first marine engineering company to build the world’s largest offshore wind turbines at sea, a great milestone, not only for us but also for the offshore wind industry.”
The Northwester 2 offshore wind farm, to be located 48km off the coast, will comprise 23 V164-9.5MW turbines to be supplied by MHI Vestas. It will be the first project that will be equipped with the 9.5MW turbine launched by MHI Vestas in June 2017.
Weighing 35 tonnes, each blade of the V164-9.5MW turbine to be installed at the Belgian offshore wind farm will be 80m long. The turbines’ hub height will be around 105m and the approximate tip height will be 187m.
In May, Bladt Industries was given a contract for the delivery of a complete and fully installed substation for the project. The substation, which is likely to have a total weight of 1,000 tonnes, will be delivered in the third quarter of 2019.
The construction phase of the Northwester 2 offshore wind farm is anticipated to open around 1000 direct and indirect jobs while there will be 100 long-term jobs to take care of its operations and maintenance.