A contract for the provision of cable installation and trenching work for DONG Energy's Race Bank offshore wind farm has been awarded to DeepOcean 1 UK Ltd, a subsidiary of DeepOcean Group Holding BV (DeepOcean), the company said in its press release.
Offshore work will be undertaken in 2016/2017 with DeepOcean’s in-house fleet of dedicated cable installation and trenching vessels.
When operational, Race Bank will have a capacity of up to 580 megawatts (MW), providing enough green energy to power over 400,000 UK homes. The wind farm will consist of 91 wind turbines each with a 6 MW capacity and will be built almost 17 miles off Blakeney Point on the North Norfolk coast, and a similar distance from the Lincolnshire coast at Chapel St. Leonards.
DeepOcean has a long track record of subsea power cable installation on critical infrastructure projects. In addition to the installation and trenching of a total of 91 inter-array cables, with a combined length of 106 km, the Race Bank contract scope includes the associated route engineering, pre-lay grapnel run operations, installation of cable protection system and messenger wires. The cables will be post-lay trenched by one of DeepOcean’s in-house trenching assets. Offshore work will be undertaken in two campaigns, commencing in Q3 2016 and Q1 2017 respectively.