Vattenfall to connect the Ormonde Wind Farm

Vattenfall has now started cable laying to connect the Ormonde Offshore Wind Farm to the high voltage national grid in the UK.

The massive 42 km long cable, made of copper and heavily armoured with steel wires and polyethylene to protect the copper, weighs 3,500 tons. This weight corresponds to the equivalent of eight fully loaded jumbo jets. The protected copper will transmit electricity from the 30-turbine wind farm to the mainland to meet the needs of over 100,000 homes annually. Forty eight optical fibres transmitting signals to control the wind farm are also encased in the cable.

Project Manager Matthew Green said:
“We are pleased to have reached yet another milestone. Once laid the cable will bring, later this year, enough clean power ashore to meet the equivalent annual electricity needs of 100,000 homes. The next stage in this tremendous piece of engineering is for the cable plough to be deployed on the vessel and for the installation of the offshore cabling to begin. The plough simultaneously lays and buries the cable in the seabed. If the weather is kind, the cable will be connected to the offshore sub-station platform in five weeks time.” 

Having completed the installation of the cable to the high voltage grid, 32 inter array cables between the turbines are to be installed in early 2011. Towers and turbine installation is due to start in March 2011.

This development comes after the delivery of the first of nine consignments of turbines and towers which arrived at Harland and Wolff in Belfast on Sunday 16th January. The turbines and towers were unloaded by Harland and Wolff personnel and stored ready for pre-assembly and delivery to the wind farm. Eventually 30 wind turbines will be pre-assembled at the yard with deliveries to continue for the next four weeks.