<p>Kaskasi is RWE’s sixth wind farm off the German coast, the 342 megawatt project is being built 35 kilometres north of the island of Heligoland and recently celebrated a ‘wedding ‘on the high seas. A ‘wedding’ is what the construction process is called when the substation topside is successfully placed on the foundation. The offshore substation is the heart, where electricity generated by each wind turbine flows together to be converted to the necessary transmission voltage.</p><p>The journey of the 1,400 tonne substation topside started in Danish Aalborg at the manufacturing facility of Bladt Industries and took two days to ship across the North Sea. Gulliver, a Floating Heavy Lift Vessel of SCALDIS, placed the substation onto the monopile foundation, completing the installation of the heaviest component of the Kaskasi offshore wind farm.</p><p>In parallel, foundation installation works are underway: With Seaway 7’s Strashnov, DEME’s Neptune and Sea Challenger and Fred Olsen’s Blue Tern, four vessels are engaged in the installation of a total of 38 monopile foundations for the wind turbines and their transition pieces. The foundations, each up to 64 metres long, weigh up to 740 tonnes – approximately equivalent to 600 small cars. The operations and processes at the offshore construction site are coordinated around the clock by the RWE Control Room on Heligoland. The nautical staff at Ems Maritime Offshore are supporting the RWE team.</p><p>To install the foundations into the seabed at depths of 18 to 25 metres, RWE is utilising two installation methods: conventional hammering and innovative vibro pile driving technology, which has the potential to reduce underwater noise emissions. This benefits the marine environment in particular. The pilot implementation of the vibro technology at Kaskasi is accompanied by the “VISSKA” research project, which is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Action.</p>
<p>Kaskasi is RWE’s sixth wind farm off the German coast, the 342 megawatt project is being built 35 kilometres north of the island of Heligoland and recently celebrated a ‘wedding ‘on the high seas. A ‘wedding’ is what the construction process is called when the substation topside is successfully placed on the foundation. The offshore substation is the heart, where electricity generated by each wind turbine flows together to be converted to the necessary transmission voltage.</p><p>The journey of the 1,400 tonne substation topside started in Danish Aalborg at the manufacturing facility of Bladt Industries and took two days to ship across the North Sea. Gulliver, a Floating Heavy Lift Vessel of SCALDIS, placed the substation onto the monopile foundation, completing the installation of the heaviest component of the Kaskasi offshore wind farm.</p><p>In parallel, foundation installation works are underway: With Seaway 7’s Strashnov, DEME’s Neptune and Sea Challenger and Fred Olsen’s Blue Tern, four vessels are engaged in the installation of a total of 38 monopile foundations for the wind turbines and their transition pieces. The foundations, each up to 64 metres long, weigh up to 740 tonnes – approximately equivalent to 600 small cars. The operations and processes at the offshore construction site are coordinated around the clock by the RWE Control Room on Heligoland. The nautical staff at Ems Maritime Offshore are supporting the RWE team.</p><p>To install the foundations into the seabed at depths of 18 to 25 metres, RWE is utilising two installation methods: conventional hammering and innovative vibro pile driving technology, which has the potential to reduce underwater noise emissions. This benefits the marine environment in particular. The pilot implementation of the vibro technology at Kaskasi is accompanied by the “VISSKA” research project, which is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Action.</p>
