N-Sea hired for Irish Sea offshore wind farm cable repair

Dutch subsea services specialist N-Sea Group has been awarded a contract to repair one of the four cables that connect the Gwynt y Môr offshore wind farm in the Irish Sea to the National Grid.

The offshore wind farm has a capacity of 576MW and is located off the coast of Wales. The wind farm has 160 wind turbines of 3,6MW and has been in operation since 2013. GYM OFTO owns the transmission assets that connect the wind farm to the National Grid.

The N-Sea scope includes replacing a 5 km section of 132kV export cable from the onshore transition joint bay towards the offshore platform. This scope includes the pull ashore of the new cable through a horizontal directional drill duct under a railway, dredging of the shore approach, jointing, and testing of the new cable and burial. This is the third repair by N-Sea for this client.

The company’s in-house survey, UXO, and data centre divisions will be used to engineer and deliver a new route for the new cable, including as-built data upon completion.

The repair campaign will happen during the summer and will be carried out by the company’s cable repair vessel Curo.

The vessel is equipped with an eight-point mooring system that allows it to maintain position during operations, even in strong tidal conditions. It also has beaching capabilities, which enable the vessel to safely approach and work as close as possible to the landfall location.