Huisman, a global supplier of technical solutions, has signed a contract with DEME to supply installation tools for the Orion vessel used in offshore wind energy. The Orion installation vessel will operate, among others, at the Arcadis Ost 1 offshore wind farm in Germany in the Baltic Sea.

Huisman and DEME specialists recently worked together to optimize the design of installation tools in terms of the safety and efficiency of monopile installations. The unique solution enables hands-free operation of monopiles by remote control. The lift is designed for the installation of new generation monopiles and can be extended to handle piles 120 m long and up to 12 m in diameter.

Huisman will provide an additional set of remotely controlled, adaptive Damping Tugger Winches. Thanks to the developed damping algorithm, these winches actively compensate for the swaying movements of the monopile during lifting operations, increasing work capacity and safety.

This order is another step in our ambition to drive down the development costs and speed up the delivery of offshore wind farms. To ensure a timely and cost-competitive delivery of these tools, we will deploy our engineering and production capacity in the Netherlands and Czech Republic  said David Roodenburg, Huisman’s CEO.

As the portal Offshore Engineer reminds us, the Orion installation vessel was expected to make its debut in 2020 at the Moray East offshore wind farm in the UK, but in May 2020, during a crane load test on the wharf at the Liebherr construction site in Rostock, Germany, a giant crane collapsed sustaining significant damage and causing delays in the delivery of the vessel.

Orion will be working on Arcadis Ost 1.

The Orion vessel can be used to build the largest offshore wind farms, to serve the oil and gas industry and to decommission offshore installations.

One of the projects Orion will be working on is the offshore wind farm Parkwind Arcadis Ost 1 in Germany (257 MW), which will be located in the waters of the Baltic Sea. The production of monopile foundations will start in 2021, and the assembly campaign is expected to start before summer 2022. Arcadis Ost 1 is to be fully commissioned in 2023.

The new generation XXL monopiles will be the largest ever installed in Europe, weighing around 2,000 tonnes each.

Source: huismanequipment.com