The Beatrice project reached a significant milestone yesterday as the final cluster of foundation piles was safely installed marking the end of the piling phase of offshore construction.
A total of 86 clusters of four piles (344 individual piles) are now in place in the Moray Firth. All were installed by Seaway Heavy Lifting’s Stanislav Yudin heavy lifting vessel using its 2,500-tonne, 110m revolving crane.
Jacket substructures are being installed onto each of the pile clusters. The jackets and foundation piles will then support the 84 Siemens Gamesa 7MW offshore wind turbines and two offshore transformer modules that make up the Beatrice offshore wind farm.
Over a quarter of the jackets have already been installed by Seaway Heavy Lifting’s Oleg Strashnov. The first phase of jacket installation work will be continuing through the winter and into early 2018.
Steven Wilson, BOWL Project Manager for SSE, said: “This is a tremendous milestone and a significant achievement for the Beatrice team and I would like to thank everyone involved. Pile installation started in April and has been completed through a particularly challenging period of weather at the back end of the campaign. It’s certainly a moment for the project to celebrate.
“Now that piling is complete, we’ll continue with jacket installation and, as we move into summer 2018, start to install the first turbines.”