First turbine goes up at “super-hybrid” offshore wind project, with floating solar and battery

The first of 69 11MW wind turbines has been installed at the 759MW Hollandse Kust Noord offshore wind park in the North Sea, a “super-hybrid” project which will also include floating solar, battery storage, and green hydrogen production.

Wind turbine manufacturer Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy and Dutch maritime contracting company Van Oord successfully completed the installation of the first 11MW turbine at Hollandse Kust Noord (HKN) over the weekend.

The Van Oord-owned offshore installation vessel Scylla sailed out from the Eemshaven to the offshore HKN last week and installed the turbine onto its foundations on Saturday.

Installation of the remaining turbines continues 24 hours per day, 7 days a week – depending on weather conditions. Given good conditions, the Scylla team can install one wind turbine in 24 hours.

“First the tower is installed on the monopile, then the nacelle on top of the tower,” said Stefan Hartman, wind turbine generator package manager at CrossWind.

“Then come the blades, which are usually the most critical lift with respect to weather conditions. Blade installation will commence if there is a sufficiently long-time window of windspeeds below 12 m/s. For comparison, 12 m/s is a windspeed at which it becomes hard to hold an umbrella.”

Once completed, the 759MW project will generate at least 3.3TWh per year.

However, the wind farm is only one part of the larger Hollandse Kust Noord project, which is being developed between CrossWind, a joint venture between Shell and Dutch utility Eneco.

Crosswind is implementing the use of five different innovations at HKN, which include a 0.5MW floating solar plant that will be located alongside the wind turbines. Battery storage and hydrogen production at megawatt scale are also on the cards, which will be able to make use of electricity generated by the wind farm and solar plant during periods of low demand.