Seagreen Wind Farm is has entered the home stretch as the remaining eight three-legged foundation towers were successfully loaded onto barges at Global Energy Group’s Port of Nigg in the Highlands of Scotland.

Global Port Services, part of Global Energy Group, fulfilled the storage, marshalling and logistics contracts for the 114, 95 metre-tall foundation towers on the South Quay at the Port of Nigg, with Seaway7 transporting the jackets on barges from the port to site located 27 kilometres off the Angus coast.

106 of the jacket substructures have been installed with 79 turbines now erected. The remaining eight foundation jackets loaded out at Nigg will remain on barges until the S7000 vessel returns to the Seagreen site in March following its maintenance outage.

First for Port of Nigg

Once operational, Seagreen will become the world’s deepest fixed bottom offshore wind farm and will provide enough clean power for around two thirds of all Scottish homes.

“This is the first time that a major infrastructure and pre-assembly contract of its type was brought to the Port of Nigg since the unveiling of the new purpose-built East Quay, so achieving the loadout of the final jackets for Seagreen is a huge achievement and I would like to thank everyone involved for their outstanding work in contributing to the delivery of the project,” said John Hill, project director for Seagreen Wind Farm.

“It marks a significant milestone in the project as we enter the final phases of work, our teams will continue to work on the commissioning of the already installed wind turbines as well as progress with the installation of array cables. The installation of jackets and turbines is expected to recommence in early spring following a planned break in the programme for the Saipem S7000 vessel and the Wind Orca,” Hill said.

Challenging project

The task of loading-in, preparing and loading out the Seagreen jackets over the last 18 months has been challenging and relentless, however the collaboration between Seaway7, Seagreen Wind Energy, Global Energy Group, Port of Cromarty Firth and Mammoet has made this possible, according to Charlie Morisson, operations director at the Port of Nigg.

“During this project we have offloaded the jackets from the heavy transport vessels, moved them to storage, then successfully loaded them onto barges for installation offshore,” Morisson said.

“The successful loadout of the final jackets from Nigg is a significant milestone on the Seagreen project and concludes the marshalling scope at Nigg Energy Park.

The Seagreen Wind Farm is a joint venture project between SSE Renewables and TotalEnergies and continues to make good progress with vessels on site mobilised to support commissioning of the already installed turbines and the installation of array cables. The project remains on track for completion in summer 2023.