Jan De Nul Group will participate in another U.S. wind offshore project. It has got a new contract to lay inter-array cables for the Vineyard Wind 1 farm. The Dutch company will also train staff for future maintenance operations.
The installation works on the Vineyard Wind 1 site off the Massachusetts coast will be carried out by Jan De Nul Group in a partnership with its subcontractor JDR Cable Systems, a part of the TFKable Group. Together they will supply and lay around 130 miles of 66-kilovolt inter-array subsea cables to connect 62 wind turbines and transfer electricity to an offshore substation. Jan de Nul Group has obtained the contract from Vineyard Wind, a joint venture between Avangrid Renewables, which in its turn is a subsidiary of Avangrid, and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP).
Skilled personnel
Besides the cable laying, the contractors will train individuals with an electrical background for installation support and subsequent maintenance. This will create around 40 new full-time jobs in Massachusetts. “Together with Vineyard Wind and our subcontractor JDR Cable Systems, we will support the local supply chain within the Massachusetts region to deliver the required offshore support vessels and skilled personnel up to the high standards required for safe and efficient offshore wind farm construction,” said Wouter Vermeersch, manager offshore cables at Jan De Nul Group.
Vineyard Wind 1 project
The planned Vineyard Wind 1 farm will be located 15 miles off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts. It will be the first commercial-scale offshore wind project in the United States. The offshore wind farm will consist of 62 GE Haliade-X turbines that will generate 800 megawatts of electricity annually. This amount is enough to power over 400,000 homes in Massachusetts. It is worth adding that in 2020 Jan De Nul Group installed foundations and wind turbines on the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind Project.
