Borssele III and IV offshore wind farm is a 731.5MW wind project deployed in the Dutch North Sea, about 22km offshore the Zeeland province in the Netherlands.
The project was developed by the Blauwwind consortium, which includes Partners Group (45%), Shell (20%), Diamond Generating Europe (DGE, 15%), Eneco Group (10%), and Van Oord (10%). The Dutch Minister of Economic Affairs selected the Blauwwind consortium for the construction of the wind farm in December 2016, under a 30-year lease agreement.
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The investment for the project construction is €1.3bn ($1.5bn) and it achieved financial closure in June 2018.
Designed to operate for 25 years, the wind farm began operations in August 2020 and reached its full operational capacity in February 2021. The facility will generate 3,000GWh of energy annually, which will be enough to power approximately 825,000 households a year.
Borssele III and IV offshore wind farm details
The Borssele III and IV offshore wind farm is situated on a 146km² area, approximately 55km from the Port of Vlissingen in the Borssele wind farm zone (BWFZ). The BWFZ consists of five wind farm sites and can generate more than 1,400MW of energy by 2020.
Borssele III and IV offshore wind farm features 77 MHI Vestas V164 9.5MW wind turbines, which have been installed on monopiles in a water depth between 16m and 38m. Each monopile is 85m long and weighs 1,280t.
The wind turbines were connected to the transformer substation through 66kV cables. The project includes the Borssele Beta offshore transformer substation, which was designed and constructed by TenneT, Netherlands’ national electricity transmission system operator. The offshore substation was installed by April 2020 and its connection to the wind farm was completed in July 2020.
A service operations vessel (SOV) performs maintenance of the wind farm.
Construction details
Construction of the wind farm commenced in 2019. The offshore construction activities included the installation of scour protection and monopoles. In October 2020, Van Oord, through its offshore installation vessel Aeolus, had installed the first monopile foundation. All the 77 monopile foundations were installed by the end of April 2020.
Van Oord began the installation of the wind turbines in May 2020. Blauwwind achieved the first power from the wind farm in August 2020.
Installation of the last turbine at the wind farm was completed by the end of November 2020. The wind farm became fully operational in February 2021.
The cables were installed after the monopoles, followed by the turbines. Van Oord’s Nexus cable-laying vessel which has a cable carousel capacity of 5,000t was used to lay the cables. The vessel completed the installation of four out of the 12 cables connecting the wind farm by April 2020.
Van Oord’s new AdBm Sound Mitigation System also helped in reducing underwater noise during pile driving works.
Transmission and grid connection
The power produced by the turbines is transported to the Borssele Beta offshore transformer substation, where it is converted from 66kV to 220kV. The power is then transferred to the onshore substation through 220kV export cables, which converts the power into 380kV before feeding into the national electricity grid.
Power purchase agreement for Borssele III and IV wind farm
Shell and Eneco Group each receive 50% of electricity produced by the project, under a power purchase agreement (PPA) signed with the Blauwwind consortium.
Blauwwind will be paid €54.49/MWh ($63.27/MWh) under the Dutch SDE+ scheme during the first 15 years of the power plant operation. The power will be subsequently sold at prevailing market prices.
Contractors involved
Van Oord was selected as the balance-of-plant contractor for the project. The company was responsible for the engineering, procurement, and construction of the wind farm’s foundations and inter-array cables.
In April 2018, Sif Holding won a contract to construct the 77 monopiles for the wind farm.
MHI Vestas was responsible for the supply and maintenance of the wind turbines.
Mott MacDonald was contracted to provide technical advisory and construction and operation monitoring services for the project. Green Giraffe is the financial advisor for the Borssele III and IV offshore wind farm.
Borssele wind project background
The project was part of the Netherlands Energy Agreement plan developed by the Dutch government to achieve 4.5GW of offshore wind capacity by 2024 through the Borssele, Holland Coast (South) and Holland Coast (North) offshore zones. A follow-up roadmap announced in 2018 aims to achieve an additional 7GW of offshore wind capacity by 2030.
Ørsted developed the 752MW Borssele I and II wind farm, which was fully commissioned in November 2020. The 19MW Borssele V wind farm was awarded to the Two Towers consortium, which consists of VOord Renewable Finance, Investri Offshore and Green Giraffe Holding.
