German North Sea News

Vattenfall and BASF are in advanced and exclusive discussions to partner on the Nordlicht 1 and 2 projects through a sale of 49 percent of the project shares to BASF. Both parties signed a Memorandum of Understanding to formally express their joint ambition. The Nordlicht wind park zone is located 85 km north of the island of Borkum in the German North Sea and consists of two separate sites: Nordlicht 1 with a capacity of 980 MW and Nordlicht 2 with 630 MW. Vattenfall develops and constructs the Nordlicht sites.

One body has been recovered and two people have been rescued in a search and rescue mission after two freighters collided in the North Sea off the coast of Germany, the maritime emergency authority said on Tuesday. The Verity, which the Central Command for Maritime Emergencies said had sunk, had been on its way from Bremen to the English town of Immingham. The Polesie was sailing from Hamburg to La Coruna in Spain. It was not immediately clear what the vessels were carrying, if anything.

Several people are missing after two freighters collided near the German North Sea island of Heligoland, the central command for maritime emergencies said on Tuesday.The Polesie and Verity vessels collided at around 0300 GMT about 12 nautical miles (22 kilometres) southwest of Heligoland, likely causing the Verity to sink, central command said in a statement. One person was rescued from the water and is receiving medical treatment, while several others are still missing, it added.The rescue operation includes a rescue cruiser…

Wagenborg Towage confirmed Monday that Jan De Nul had awarded it a contract for transporting 107 monopile foundations for Gode Wind 3 and Borkum Riffgrund 3 offshore wind farms in Germany to Eemshaven. Assisted by the tug ‘waterlines’, the first transports arrived in Eemshaven under agency of Wagenborg.In the upcoming months, Wagenborg will perform another 35 voyages with monopiles from Germany and Denmark to the temporary storage in Eemshaven using a specially equipped pontoon…

The U.S. Administration’s strategy to fast-track offshore wind development is exciting for overseas shipbuilders and service providers in the field. Joint ventures meeting Jones Act requirements will support accelerating development. Some question, however, whether ambitious 2030 targets can actually be achieved.Ulstein group is a front runner. The Norwegian-based company has already provided the design for a rock installation vessel now under construction for a joint venture between Houston-based Great Lakes Dredge & Dock (GLDD) and Netherlands based Van Oord.

Offshore accommodation company CBED has won a contract extension for its Wind Innovation service operations vessel Wind Innovation.Back in May, the company secured a contract for the vessel at the DanTysk and Sandbank offshore wind farms in the German North Sea.Now, the extension has been secured with the wind farm owner, a joint venture between Vattenfall Europe Windkraft GmbH and Stadtwerke München GmbH Vattenfall, securing full activity for the SOV, Wind Innovation, from Q1 to Q4 2023.

Dutch/German grid operator TenneT said Monday that the 900 MW offshore substation platform DolWin kappa had sailed away from the Dragados Offshore shipyard in Cádiz, Spain. "TenneT will soon be reliably bringing even more green wind power from the German North Sea to land via the direct current connection DolWin6," TenneT said in the announcement of the sailaway which took place on August 5, 2022."After only three years of construction, the platform is now on board the transport barge “Iron Lady” and on its way to the Dutch port of Rotterdam.

The U.S. is spanning a sea bridge over the Atlantic to support Ukraine with crucial equipment in its war against Russia, a senior official said on Friday, as a huge cargo ship at the Belgian port of Antwerp got ready to set sail for Germany.Carol Petsonk, the United States' Assistant Secretary for Aviation and International Affairs, was shown around the loading dock of the vehicles carrier "Arc Integrity" where the military gear was tied with straps to the floor."What we see is the vessel's carrying two types of equipment: One is the personal vehicles, belongings of service members who are going to serve in U.S.

Offshore accommodation company CBED has won a contract for its Wind Innovation vessel on the DanTysk and Sandbank offshore wind farms in the German North Sea."With the operations and maintenance service contract with DanTysk Sandbank Offshore Wind GmbH & Co. KG, a joint venture between Vattenfall Europe Windkraft GmbH and Stadtwerke München GmbH., CBED secures full activity until Q4 2022 for its walk-to-work service operation vessel, Wind Innovation," CBED said.Ahead of starting its German North Sea contract…

A floating liquefied natural (LNG) gas terminal will enter operation at the start of 2023 in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein, newspaper Die Welt reported on Tuesday, citing state premier Daniel Guenther."We are working at full speed on this ... Our goal is to get it done by the beginning of 2023.

Edward Heerema is founder and president of Allseas, which brought the world’s largest construction vessel, Pioneering Spirit, to the market. The company, which also brought innovation to the pipelay sector, has added its latest trick to Pioneering Spirit – its jacket lift system. But Allseas is also targeting deepsea mining and has its sights on the offshore wind market. Elaine Maslin caught up with Edward Heerema to find out more.The first time I met Edward Heerema was at the company’s offices in Delft, in the Netherlands.

Edda Wind's new commissioning service operation vessel (CSOV) was named Edda Breeze during a ceremony at Astilleros Gondan Shipyard in Spain, on Saturday.The purpose-built CSOV is designed for emissions-free operations with a hydrogen-based propulsion system. The 88.3-meter-long vessel will serve as mother vessel for wind turbine technicians as they perform commissioning and maintenance work on offshore wind turbines. It can accommodate up to 120 persons in total.Edda Breeze is…

Hydrogen company Tree Energy Solutions (TES), backed by Belgian investor group AtlasInvest, said on Wednesday it would build an LNG terminal in the German North Sea port town of Wilhelmshaven, business newspaper Handelsblatt reported on Wednesday.The terminal is down to receive investments of 25 billion euros by 2045 and scheduled to go into operation in three years, Handelsblatt added, and could bring up to 30 billion cubic meters of natural gas to Germany in the first few years."Our Wilhelmshaven project will account for 10% of the total annual primary energy demand of Germany by 2045…

Danish offshore wind installation firm Cadeler has been chosen as a preferred supplier of wind turbine generator installation vessels by Ørsted for the combined Gode Wind 3 & Borkum Riffgrund 3 projects in the German North Sea.The award covers the transport and installation of a minimum of 48 x 11MW turbines, which will be located adjacent to Ørsted's existing offshore wind farms Borkum Riffgrund 1 and Borkum Riffgrund 2 and in the vicinity of Gode Wind 1 and 2.For this project Cadeler will deploy its installation vessel Wind Osprey…

Belgian offshore installation service provider DEME Offshore has installed the DolWin6 High Voltage DC (HVDC) cable in the German North Sea, using its LNG-powered DP3 vessel Living Stone. DolWin6 has a transmission capacity of 900 MW and is owned and operated by transmission system operator TenneT. The HVDC cable runs from several offshore wind farms in Germany via Norderney to the German mainland."This is the first time a cable-laying vessel has installed cables while powered on LNG…

As the traditional offshore oil and gas markets continue to struggle, the renewable offshore wind market is hot and getting hotter.As the cumulative maritime, offshore, port and logistics marketplace gears up for offshore wind energy on a huge scale, World Energy Reports (WER), in its report “2021 The Year When Offshore Wind Takes Off in the United States,” shows the anticipated growth trajectory. Service Operations Vessels (SOVs), which can commission and/or maintain turbines…

Acta Marine has this week completed its three-year maintenance campaign for Ocean Breeze on the Bard Offshore 1 wind farm, the first commercial offshore wind farm in Germany.Acta Marine's Acta Auriga walk-to-work support vessel - which offers comfortable accommodation and workspace to 120 passengers - started the O&M works on the Bard Offshore 1 wind farm in April 2018 just weeks after vessel delivery from Ulsteinvik in Norway.The offshore wind farm is located approximately 100…

Dutch dredging giant Boskalis has secured three dredging contracts worth 45 million euros (around USD 53,1 million) in total for coastal protection and port maintenance activities in Germany.The first contract was awarded by the German Waterways and Shipping Office WSA Weser-Jade-Nordsee. It is for the upgrade of the existing coastal defense on the island of Wangerooge for flood protection to the island’s residents.Boskalis said the project would be executed with a local German partner and involves the reinforcement of the groins and revetment for which 200,000 tons of rock will be used.

The BorWin3 offshore wind grid connection project in the German North Sea has been handed over to the German/Dutch transmission grid operator TenneT, by contractors Siemens and Petrofac.The 900 MW project will convert three-phase electric power generated by the Hohe See and Albatros offshore wind farms into direct current and transmit it 160km back to shore to the German national grid.Siemens was responsible for the grid connection system including an onshore converter station.The grid connections HelWin1 and HelWin2, BorWin2, SylWin1, and BorWin3 – for which Siemens supplied all the technology for direct current transmission – are thus now in commercial operation and are transmitting power.Siemens, together with Petrofac, was awarded the contract for BorWin3 in the spring of 2014.

German wind turbine builder is carrying out a condition monitoring campaign at the 402MW Veja Mate offshore wind farm in the German North Sea.The rotor blade condition monitoring system or fos4X “retroX” system, consisting of a sensor platform and intelligent software, was installed on strategically selected 10% of the wind farm’s turbines."The system enables structural condition monitoring of the rotor blades, recording of loads during turbine life time as well as the detection of yaw and pitch misalignment," said a press note from the specialist in fiber optic measurement technology and sensor technology.A further aspect of the joint project carried out by fos4X is the monitoring, consolidation and orchestration of the entire turbine and subsystem data.

Prysmian Group, the major player in energy and telecom cable systems industry,  has has announced that it commissioned the 900MW DolWin3 high voltage direct current (HVDC) offshore grid link in the German North Sea.Prysmian had secured this project in February 2013, with a contract awarded by Alstom Grid (now GE Grid GmbH) on behalf of the Dutch-German grid operator TenneT.DolWin3, the third offshore grid connection in the DolWin cluster, links the offshore converter platform DolWin Gamma, located approximately 85 kilometers offshore in the North Sea, to the German mainland.As a one-stop-shop service provider, Prysmian was responsible for the supply…

The newly built Service Operation Vessel (SOV) “Bibby WaveMaster Horizon” is equipped with propulsion units from SCHOTTEL. Ordered by the British company Bibby Marine Services Ltd. and built at Damen Shipyards Galati, the vessel is driven by three rudderpropellers and two bow thrusters from the German propulsion expert. The new walk-to-work vessel is purpose-built for the transfer and accommodation of support and maintenance engineers at offshore wind farms.Maintaining wind turbines…

Turkey’s Cemre Shipyard has contracted Dutch equipment supply company Pronomar to equip two service operation vessels (SOVs) ordered by Louis Dreyfus Armateurs for Ørsted with drying systems for the workwear of the technicians.The first of the two vessels, Wind of Change, has been using Pronomar’s equipment since June 2019 when it started servicing Ørsted’s offshore wind farms in the German North Sea.With accommodation for 90 people, this vessel is one of the biggest SOV’s in the offshore wind industry.After a successful delivery in April of this year, LDA commissioned Cemre Shipyard once again to build their sister vessel named “Wind…