Pioneering Spirit Booked for Gennaker Substation Installs

Dutch offshore contractor Allseas informs it has secured the contract to perform transport and installation (T&I) of two major substations (so called OSS) for the Gennaker offshore wind farm in the German Baltic Sea, developed by transmission operator 50Hertz.

Located 15 kilometers off the German coast near the Darß peninsula, and with a production capacity of 900 MW, Gennaker will be the largest and most powerful offshore wind farm in the Baltic Sea to date.

Awarded by the Dutch-Belgian HSI consortium – HSM Offshore Energy, Smulders and Iv – the contract is for the Gennaker West (OSS-DarB) and East(OSS-Zingst) converter platforms, including supporting suction buckets jackets. The HSI Joint Venture is responsible for delivering the two platforms.

Allseas will deploy its heavy lift vessel Pioneering Spirit for the project, utilizing the vessel’s unique transport and lift capability to install the suction buckets jackets and the 61-meter-long, 34-meter-wide topsides in one offshore campaign. This reduces operations offshore, making the installations safer and faster.

At 382 meters long and 124 meters wide, Pioneering Spirit is the world's largest offshore construction ship, built at the DSME shipyard in South Korea from 2011 to 2014, and in service since 2016. At the bow of the twin-hulled vessel 122 meters long and 59 meters wide slot that enables Pioneering Spirit to move around a platform and lift and transport entire topsides using eight sets of horizontal lifting beams. It is capable of lifting topsides of up to 48,000 tonnes and jackets up to 20,000 tonnes in a single piece.