Van Oord completes foundations for East Anglia ONE wind project off the coast of UK

Van Oord has installed the last jacket foundation for offshore wind farm East Anglia ONE and delivered it to client ScottishPower Renewables. This marks the marine contractor's completion of its work for the UK wind project. As the main contractor, Van Oord transported and installed all 102 foundations. This is the largest number of three-legged wind turbine foundations ever installed offshore. Due to be completed in 2020, East Anglia ONE is expected to supply the equivalent of more than 630,000 British households with green electricity.

The work took place at a depth of more than 40 meters in the North Sea at a location where the seas are often rough, the current strong and visibility minimal. In order to be able to install wind turbine foundations in these conditions, Van Oord developed a pile-driving template. The team used this template to drive the anchoring piles for each three-legged jacket foundation into the seabed with millimeter precision. Subsequently, the gigantic wind turbine foundations could be installed in the piles.

Client ScottishPower Renewables outsourced the manufacture of the jacket foundations and anchoring piles to suppliers in the United Kingdom, Spain, and the Middle East. Van Oord was involved in the logistics and transported some of the foundations to BOW Terminal Vlissingen, the storage and transshipment port for the wind turbine foundations.