Siemens Energy, Smulders Deliver Moray West Offshore Substation Topsides - Offshore WIND
Siemens Energy, Smulders Deliver Moray West Offshore Substation Topsides | Offshore Wind
Siemens Energy, Smulders Deliver Moray West Offshore Substation Topsides
Smulders and Siemens Energy have sent off the first of the two Offshore Transformer Modules (OTMs) for the Moray West offshore wind farm from the Smulders yard on the Tyne at Wallsend. The second OTM has also been loaded onto a barge and is ready to be transported to Scotland.
The OTMs have been delivered under a contract secured by the consortium of Siemens Energy and Iemants, a subsidiary of Smulders.
Both OTMs have been fabricated at the yard with Siemens Energy managing the fit-out of their equipment onto the OTMs from their Manchester base.
Smulders loaded out the first Offshore Transformer Module for Moray West at the end of September, when the company also said it would load the second OTM onto a barge in the second half of October and dispatch it to Scotland a few weeks after that.
On 1 November, the offshore wind farm developer Ocean Winds and Smulders and Siemens Energy celebrated the completion and load out of the OTMs with Lord Lennie, Labour’s Shadow Energy Security & Net Zero spokesperson.
According to Ocean Winds, these are the first offshore wind topsides to be fabricated in the UK in several years.
This is the second major offshore wind farm for which Ocean Winds has contracted Siemens Energy and Smulders, following earlier contracts for the 950 MW Moray East project that included foundations fabrication work by Smulders at the Smulders Projects UK Wallsend yard and the delivery of the onshore substation by Siemens Energy.
The 882 MW Moray West offshore wind farm is located in the Moray Firth, approximately 22.5 kilometres from the Caithness coastline, where major offshore construction work started at the beginning of October with the installation of the first monopile foundation by Boskalis, which will also install the OTMs.
The Moray West offshore wind farm will comprise 60 Siemens Gamesa 14.7 MW wind turbines and is scheduled to be fully operational in 2025.
Once commissioned, the 882 MW offshore wind farm is expected to meet the electricity requirements of about 650,000 households in Scotland for 25 years.
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Over the next decade, U.S. offshore wind power is expected to grow from a single 30-megawatt wind farm off Rhode Island to more than 2,000 MW of capacity along the Atlantic Seaboard. There are contracts for wind power off the coasts of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Maryland, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Virginia.
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory has estimated the United States has over 4,000 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind potential, enough to power the country four times over.
The growth in part being spurred by state solicitations, including in New York, where then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) set a commitment of 9,000 MW of offshore wind by 2035, and in Connecticut, where in June 2021, Gov. Ned Lamont (D) signed legislation authorizing the construction of 2,000 MW of offshore wind by 2030.
The offshore development is also being driven by an investment tax credit set to end in December 2019 and is equal to 12 percent of expenditures. U.S. Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Tom Carper (D-Del.) have introduced a bill to extend the tax credit for up to eight years.
The Interior Department has held eight competitive lease sales that resulted in 15 offshore wind leases over 1.7 million acres that has the potential for 21 GW of capacity. In February 2022, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management completed a bidding process that realized $4.37 billion for 488,000 acres across six lease areas in federal waters off New York and New Jersey.
Projects have also been proposed off the Southeast coast, off California and Hawaii, and for the Great Lakes.