Petrofac and Drydocks World ship second topside for Dutch wind farm

The second of two offshore transformer station topsides that will connect an offshore wind farm with the mainland power grid in the Netherlands sailed from Dubai last month, top project officials told Energy Connects on Monday.

The High Voltage Alternating Current (HVAC) Alpha topside for the offshore windfarm sailed in November 2021 and has already been installed at the 1.5 gigawatts (GW) Hollandse Kust Zuid (HKZ) grid about 18km off the coast of the Netherlands on the North Sea – which will become the world’s largest offshore wind project upon its commissioning in 2023.

Together, the Alpha and Beta topsides – both fabricated in the UAE through an end-to-end collaboration between Drydocks World, Petrofac and TenneT – will form part of the HKZ grid that will connect the offshore wind farm with the Dutch mainland, producing enough renewable electricity to cover the annual needs of over two million households.

Being developed by Swedish energy company Vattenfall, the four-parcel HKZ is the first non-subsidised wind farm project in the Netherlands.

Dutch-German transmission grid operator TenneT signed a contract with Vattenfall to provide offshore grid connection for the third and fourth sites of the wind farm in April 2020, and contracted Petrofac to develop the topsides – giant substations that typically house the grid transformers, switchgear and auxiliary power supplies.

The offshore wind farm will cover an area of 235.8 km2 and be made up of four 350 MW offshore wind farms, which will be connected to two 700 MW offshore substations – the already installed Alpha topside and the Beta topside.

Petrofac is responsible for the complete engineering, procurement, construction and offshore installation of both, and awarded the contract to Drydocks World to complete fabrication, commissioning and load out for both topsides.

First connection made with mainland

On Monday, executives from Drydocks World, Petrofac and TenneT cheered during an event at the DP World Pavilion at Expo 2020 Dubai, as news broke of the first operational connection made between the grid and the mainland.

Speaking during the event, Marco Kuijpers, Director Large Project Offshore at TenneT, told Energy Connects that the completion of the Beta topside marks a critical milestone for the offshore grid to take shape. “Wind energy plays a crucial role in the energy transition, and I am proud that TenneT – together with Petrofac and Drydocks World – can contribute to a sustainable future in this way.”

The fabrication and delivery of the two topsides also marks a new era of industrial innovation for Dubai and the UAE, which last year launched a national industrial strategy to increase the manufacturing sector’s contribution from approximately US $36 billion to $81 billion over the next 10 years.

“At Drydocks World, we are committed to supporting our customers and industry with innovative low carbon and net zero solutions to energy production,” Captain Rado Antolovic, CEO of Drydocks World, told Energy Connects during the event.

“Completing our part in the HKZ Alpha and Beta topside project is a major milestone for us and we are looking forward to working on similar projects to create a more environmentally conscious future,” he added.

The fabrication of the two topsides started in 2020 at Drydocks World’s fabrication facility in Dubai. The 700 MW Beta topside weighs 3,950-tonne and was completed in a record 2.1 million work hours without any lost time incident (LTI) during the pandemic.

“We are proud and happy to have reached such a significant milestone on this renewable energy project, working with Drydocks World and other partners to help our client TenneT and the Dutch government increase wind energy production capacity offshore of the Netherlands,” Elie Lahoud, Chief Operating Officer Engineering & Construction at Petrofac, told Energy Connects.

“We look forward to our installation of the second topside, together with the final completion and commissioning work, and scheduled handover of the project later this year,” Lahoud added.