Offshore wind partnerships: Sunly, Valorem target Estonia project; Semco, Navantia focus on substations
Estonian energy producer Sunly and France’s VALOREM Group have agreed to join Deep Wind Offshore’s Tuul Energy offshore wind development in Estonia.
The project includes a 250-sq-km area offshore Saaremaa Island under exclusive development.
In western Europe, Navantia Seanergies and Semco Maritime have announced a new offshore wind substation partnership at the WindEurope exhibition in Copenhagen.
They plan to offer a project life-cycle approach, drawing on experience of maintaining more than 40 offshore substations across Europe. Their focus will be on developments offshore Europe and North America, complementing Semco Maritime’s existing collaboration with Vietnamese fabricator PTSC M&C, which extends to the Asia-Pacific sector.
Semco Maritime was involved in the first offshore wind farm construction program in Danish waters in 2002, and it has since played a part in more than 20 offshore wind farm projects globally. The company claims to have delivered about 20% of the world’s offshore substations.
In 2019, Semco Maritime secured its first work offshore the US eastern seaboard for the 804-MW offshore substation for Vineyard Wind, followed in 2021 by an order for two offshore substations in Taiwan, Hai Long 2 and 3 (1 GW in total).
The company also claims to be the largest independent service provider in the North Sea. In 2022, TenneT awarded Semco Maritime a service contract for all its HVAC and HVDC substations offshore Germany and the Netherlands.
Navantia Seanergies, a division of Spanish shipbuilding/engineering group Navantia, provides solutions for offshore wind farm foundations and substations.
Since 2014, Navantia has supported 21 projects in nine countries, including more than 220 jackets and over 110 monopiles, for companies such as Equinor, Iberdrola, Ocean Winds and Orsted.
For substations, it has participated in eight HVAC and HVDC topsides and/or foundations projects, developed at its facilities in Puerto Real, southwest Spain. Facilities there are designed to construct large offshore structures; a new flat panel workshop will enable fabrication of panels up to 20 by 22 m and up to 150 tons in weight.
