Van Oord’s 2nd cable-layer makes her debut

Calypso is now working at the Sofia Offshore Wind Farm at Dogger Bank, in the central North Sea 195km from the north-east coast of the UK. Calypso is second to Nexus.

The wind farm has a generation capacity of 1.4GW, supplying 1.2 million households. Owner RWE has contracted Van Oord to design, engineer, procure, build and install the monopile foundations and array cables. Calypso will install around 360km of inter-array cables.

Van Oord calls the Calypso a state-of-the-art piece of equipment that can install inter-array, grid and export cables, including HVDC cables.

The vessel has two cable carousels, one on deck, the other below, which can weight up to 8,000 tonnes. It can run on biofuels, Van Oord says, with ‘future-ready’ engines ‘with built-in flexibility to anticipate e-fuels’.

The vessel has a large battery, shore supply connection and energy management system.

“With the Calypso now operational, we have significantly strengthened our cable installation fleet,” said Van Oord’s managing director Offshore Energy Arnoud Kuis. “This milestone reflects our commitment to continuously reinforcing our leading position in the market by investing in sustainable technology.

“With two cable installation vessels at our disposal, along with our extensive experience and expertise, we have the resources and flexibility needed to provide value to our clients and excel in this dynamic industry. It’s exciting to see the Calypso in action, installing its first cables on the Sofia project, and we look forward to its successful deployment on many more offshore wind projects.”