Latest Van Oord offshore installation vessel delivered

Boreas, which is named after the Greek god of the Northern winds, has been purpose built for the transport and installation of the next generation of offshore foundations and wind turbines, which will dwarf the early versions in orders of magnitude.

Van Oord says the vessel will have the ability to lift more than 3,000 tonnes and work in water up to 70 metres deep thanks to its four giant legs, each measuring 126 metres.

This means it will be capable of installing the new generation of 20MW wind turbines.

The giant is 175 metres long with a 155m-high boom, and is also the first of its kind that can operate on methanol, ‘reducing the ship’s footprint by more than 78%’, says Van Oord.

Built at Chinese shipyard Yantai CIMC Raffles Offshore, Boreas will sail to the Netherlands imminently, where final outfitting works will be carried out, such as the equipment for storing and handling wind turbine foundations. She will also be christened there and sent out to work in the third quarter of 2025.

For context, the first offshore wind turbine was installed in 1991 at Vindeby in the Danish Baltic Sea.

Its 450kW generation capacity amounted to less than 1/40th of today’s 20MW mammoths; its rotor diameter was 35 metres, just 14% of the size of today’s; the height to its hub was a maximum of 40 metres, where today’s is at least 150 metres; and it could only be installed in waters with a maximum depth of just four metres, compared with 70 metres today.

Vindeby was decommissioned in 2017 after 25 years’ operation.

“We’re happy to work together with Van Oord and deliver the state-of-the-art vessel Boreas,” said CIMC Raffles Group vice-president Zhao Hui.

“Undoubtedly Boreas is a benchmark for the whole offshore wind industry for many years to come and will play a significant role for the transportation and installation of the next generation of foundations and up to 20MW offshore wind turbines at sea.”