newsflash
Two weeks after the successful load out, the steel topside for the Hollandse Kust (noord) platform left the port of Hoboken (Antwerp) on Wednesday 28 September. The transport has now sailed on a pontoon to the port of IJmuiden. There, the topside will remain at the Leonarduskade until weather conditions are good, and the installation vessel Orion is available to install the topside at sea.
Once the Orion has finished its current job in British waters, the vessel will sail from DEME's fleet to the coast of North Holland. The 3,500-tonne steel structure will then be installed 18.5 kilometres off the coast of Egmond aan Zee. There, the jacket has already been firmly anchored to the seabed since November last year. On site, the large crane on the Orion lifts the 47-metre-long, 35-metre-wide and 25-metre-high structure off the pontoon and places it on the undercarriage. The topside and jacket will then be welded together and the substation will be commissioned in the coming months.
1 of 3
Two years after the first steel cut, the topside, built by Smulders and EQUANS, is ready. This makes it the first of the three topsides they are delivering for TenneT. After ‘noord’, 'west Alpha' will follow in 2023 and 'west Beta' in 2025. From the outlets at sea, each with a capacity of 700 megawatts, the grid operator will bring sustainably generated electricity ashore in the coming years.
