A ship taller than a skyscraper is heading to the North Sea to build the world’s largest offshore wind farm at Dogger Bank, off the north-east coast of England.
The Voltaire “jack-up” ship – so called because it deploys its four 130-metre-long legs to stand on the sea floor – reaches 336 metres, just taller than the Eiffel Tower. Its main deck crane can lift wind turbine components weighing 3200 tonnes – more than 22 times the weight of the Statue of Liberty’s copper and iron body. “Our vessel has been designed especially to install the highest offshore structures in the world,” says at Jan De Nul Group, an engineering company headquartered in Luxembourg.
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Vessels like these are in high demand but as the world races to build offshore wind farms with increasingly large wind turbines, including the 14-megawatt turbines planned for Dogger Bank. These will be the largest ever installed offshore with rotating blades, which sweep a circle more than double the length of a football field.
The Voltaire is the first of a new generation of ships that can handle such huge turbines. Worldwide, there are plans to either for this purpose by 2025.
“Most existing jack-up wind turbine installation vessels do not have cranes that are large enough to assemble the current generation of wind turbines,” says at the National Offshore Wind Research & Development Consortium, a non-profit funded in part by the US government.
The Voltaire set sail from the COSCO Shipping Shipyard in China on 20 December 2022 and has been slowly making its way toward Europe via the Cape Route around the southern edge of Africa. Following its planned arrival after the winter, the ship would begin construction on the Dogger Bank Wind Farm off the coast of England.
The wind farm could power more than 6 million UK homes once it is completed in 2026 – and the Voltaire will be used throughout the installation process. “Voltaire is already fully booked to install offshore wind turbines during the next three years,” says Heiremans.
The Voltaire is also designed to minimise its own carbon footprint by using an exhaust filter system capable of removing up to 99 per cent of tiny particles from its emissions and running on second-generation biodiesel fuel, which uses agricultural and cooking waste when available. That makes it the first seagoing installation vessel to meet the European Union’s strictest emission regulations.
Article amended on 5 January 2023
We corrected the location of Jan De Nul Group.
