A specialist company has been hired to install both navigation and monitoring buoys at the huge Triton Knoll offshore wind farm where construction is due to start shortly, writes Dag Pike.
The UK-based company Partrac, which offers a wide range of coastal and marine related services will supply and install 12 navigation buoys to warn mariners of the location of the construction site as well as two metocean buoys that will supply environmental information to the construction and service crews. The Triton Knoll wind farm is located approximately 18 miles off the Lincolnshire coast, just to the east of the main shipping channel that leads into the Wash. When completed it will be one of the major North Sea wind farms with its 90 9.5MW turbines generating a total of 857MW. These will generate enough electricity to power more than 800,000 typical UK homes.
Under the terms of the contract, Partrac will supply and install 12 buoys to separate the offshore construction site and act as navigation aids to mariners. These buoys will comprise five cardinal buoys that will marks the extremities of the construction site plus seven special buoys that will mark specific areas. The company will also supply, install and maintain two metocean buoys that are designed to collect information about offshore conditions and will supply information such as wave height, direction and frequency plus water temperature and current velocity and direction. Additionally, Partrac will provide the data link to facilitate the sharing of this metocean data which will aid in operational decision-making during the construction period. The metocean data will be used daily to help plan, inform and increase the safety of hundreds of heavy lifts and personnel transfers, plus boulder clearance, subsea and cable lay operations during the construction phase.
The Triton Knoll offshore wind project is owned by Innogy (59%), J-Power (25%) and Kansai Electric Power (16%).
Innogy Triton Knoll project director Julian Garnsey commented, “Completing the construction of Triton Knoll safely depends on having an excellent management of the offshore site area which totals well over 50 square kilometres”. The construction of the offshore wind project is expected to begin in January 2020.
