Ørsted and Jan De Nul Group announce the installation of the first foundation for the Borkum Riffgrund 3 offshore wind farm (913 MW) off the German Coast. Borkum Riffgrund 3 will be the largest wind farm in German waters to date, according to the company's release.
Jan De Nul Group’s heavy-lift vessel Les Alizés has installed the first of 83 monopile foundations at 53 kilometres off the island of Borkum. The foundations of Borkum Riffgrund 3 are up to 100 metres long and weigh up to 1,500 tonnes. They are manufactured by Steelwind in Nordenham and at Bladt Industries A/S' Lindø plant in Denmark. Next year, a new generation of turbines, the SG 11.0-200 DD offshore wind turbine, will be installed on these foundations.
This installation campaign started immediately after the last monopile foundation for the Gode Wind 3 project (253 MW) was installed. In total, Les Alizés put 24 monopiles in place for the future turbines, including one monopile and topside of the offshore substation.
Borkum Riffgrund 3 will be built without an offshore substation.
Borkum Riffgrund 3 is the first Ørsted wind farm in Germany to be built without an offshore substation (OSS). The new connection concept, which is being implemented together with transmission system operator TenneT, provides a direct connection of the wind turbines via 66 kV export cables to the DolWin5 offshore converter platform from TenneT.
Together with Gode Wind 3, Borkum Riffgrund 3 will have a total capacity of more than 1.1 GW. This almost doubles Ørsted's installed offshore wind power capacity in Germany to around 2.5 GW. The two wind farms are expected to be commissioned in 2024 and 2025 respectively.