TenneT today published its paper ‘The Offshore Bidding Zone’. The paper is a guidance document with the ultimate goal of realising an initial Offshore Bidding Zone with associated laws and regulations. Offshore wind growth comes with challenges, especially in terms of infrastructure and market integration. To accelerate the roll-out of wind energy and promote international cooperation, Offshore Bidding Zones are needed, according to TenneT. Offshore Bidding Zones Offshore bidding zones are separate price regions for offshore hubs, within the European electricity market. The European electricit ..read more

Dutch companies Fusie Engineers and Q3 Heavy Lift will jointly design a state-of-the-art 140m x 40m flattop barge. This vessel is tailored for transporting heavy cargo for offshore wind projects in Taiwan. Q3 Heavy Lift, known for its extensive experience and efficiency as full-service provider in heavy cargo logistics, is enhancing its fleet to meet the growing demand for renewable energy infrastructure transport. Fusie Engineers brings its ship design and offshore engineering expertise with detailed scantling calculations, stability studies, and preparation of basic design drawings including ..read more

Fugro has relocated its Amberjack self-elevating platform (SEP) to Japan. This move will speed up mobilisation to project sites and allow faster delivery of Fugro’s accurate Geo-data to the country’s developing offshore wind industry. Under Japanese regulations, vessels registered in Japan follow a more streamlined procedure than foreign-flagged vessels when deployed for fieldwork. The Amberjack was reflagged in December 2023 and is now based in Tokyo, from where it will be deployed to wind farm projects in Japan and provide clients with geotechnical borehole drilling, high-quality sampling, a ..read more

Vattenfall is starting a study in which one of the turbines of wind farm Hollandse Kust Zuid will be equipped with 16 infrared cameras. The use of the cameras should improve bird casualty counts from offshore wind farms. Currently, theoretical models are used to estimate the number of casualties, but there are few actual observations to support these models. Every year many millions of birds migrate across the North Sea during spring and fall migration. On fine days, songbirds and waders fly hundreds of meters high, but in bad weather they stay closer to the surface and therefore come within r ..read more

At the end of 2022, the construction of the Maasvlakte 2 Wind Farm was completed. Of the 22 wind turbines, 12 are located on the beach at Maasvlakte 2, Rotterdam, the Netherlands. To carry out maintenance on these turbines, which are partly in the water, Eneco developed special beach vehicles. Windpark Maasvlakte 2, with a total capacity of 116.7 MW, was realized by Eneco on behalf of Rijkswaterstaat, the executive agency of the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management. The wind farm comprises 12 wind turbines on the soft seawall (on the beach) and 10 wind turbines on the hard seawall ..read more

Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO), by order of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy, has developed a viewer (layer map) in which the current and future activities for wind energy and mining in the North Sea are visible. There are oil and gas extraction platforms in or near wind energy areas. In the future, more gas fields will be taken out of production. As a result, platforms will also disappear. At the same time, there will also be oil and gas extraction at sea in the coming years – and new platforms will be added as a result. The Dutch government wants the generation of win ..read more

The Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) has presented a comprehensive package of measures aimed at reducing the problem of grid congestion. These measures are meant to make it more appealing to utilize the grid in a flexible manner and free up capacity for other users and for producers of sustainable electricity. The Netherlands is facing the problem of grid congestion. It will take at least another 10 years to solve the problem of the full power grid, ACM says. In the time it takes for grid operators to enforce the grids, grid operators and users must do what they can to cre ..read more

Our partner HeavyLiftNews.com was one of the invitees to see the first crane by Dutch company Tetrahedron put through its paces onshore in Vlissingen this week, following a successful 70t load test earlier this month. Before seeing this first crane in action the development, geometry and eventual fabrication, transportation and installation stages of the crane were described by Wilco Stavenuiter (company founder), Alexander Ronse (Engineering Manager), Stephan van der Mel (Senior Structural Engineer), Rick Markestein (Senior Design Engineer). Five years ago, they realised that the height of of ..read more

The export cables for TenneT’s Hollandse Kust (west Beta) grid connection project have arrived at the port of Rotterdam. The export cables were manufactered by Orient Cable in China and safely transported to the Netherlands via the Red Sea and the Suez Canal, it was reported on LinkedIn. From May, contractor NBOS (Boskalis / Orient Cable) will moor several vessels off the coast of Velzen for the installation of the export cables. By mid-May, the first of the two 65-kilometre-long 220kV cables will be pulled under the dunes from the sea. The cables will connect the planned Hollandse K ..read more

Prysmian has awarded Belgian marine contractor DEME with two contracts for the engineering and installation works for the IJmuiden Ver Alpha and Nederwiek 1 offshore grid systems in the Netherlands. For DEME, this is the most extensive cabling award in the company’s history. It will also be the company’s first project involving Prysmian’s 525 kV HVDC cable technology, featuring increased transmission capacity. The contracts, with a value of more than 300 million euro, exemplify DEME’s integrated solutions approach, encompassing cable installation, landfall and rock placement, dredging, and mar ..read more