Boat damaged after collision with turbine at Hornsea offshore wind farm

A service operation vessel (SOV) under charter to Danish offshore wind giant Ørsted reportedly collided with a wind turbine at the Hornsea 1 offshore wind farm located in the UK’s part of the North Sea.

According to a statement from French offshore services provider Louis Dreyfus Armateurs (LDA), the SOV Wind of Hope “allided with a wind turbine” at Hornsea 1 on September 19.

With a crew of 26 and carrying an additional 46 specialist personnel, LDA reported that there were no injuries and that there was no water ingress or water pollution as a result of the accident.

The accident nevertheless resulted in damage to the starboard side of the Wind of Hope above the waterline and the helideck. The Wind of Hope will now proceed to port for damage assessment.

The allision also resulted in “some” damage to the base of the turbine, which led Ørsted to create an exclusion zone around the turbine.

This serves as just the latest offshore wind farm mishap to plague the sector this year.

Several turbine blade failures have dominated headlines – though very little commonality has been determined between the incidents, despite three blades failing at the same wind farm.

In May, damage was sustained to a single turbine blade during construction at the massive 3.6GW Dogger Bank project in the North Sea, deemed a result of an installation issue. A second blade failed in August but was billed only as “a blade failure”, while a third blade failure was blamed on a combination of high winds during a storm that hit during the commissioning process.  

A fourth blade failure, this time during the construction of Vineyard Wind, the first commercial-scale offshore wind farm to be built in the United States, was reported in August.

All four incidents involved blades made by American energy equipment manufacturer GE Vernova, but the company insisted that issues causing the failures were unrelated.