The maritime company Boskalis completed the initial excavation works and route clearance for the future Baltica 2 offshore wind farm. This infrastructure, which will have a capacity of 1.5 GW under the development of Ørsted, required the continuous involvement for nearly a year of the construction support vessel BOKA Falcon in Polish territorial waters.
Progress in the preparation of the Polish seabed
In order to ensure the laying of the electrical networks, the main vessel operated jointly with its sister ship BOKA Fulmar. The main activities consisted of excavating the export trench and systematically removing rocks along the entire planned route. To achieve this performance, the crew used a system of specialized ploughs that optimized seabed preparation.
Specifically, the BOKA Falcon leveraged its bollard pull capacity of more than 400 tonnes to operate the T-Rex plough initially and later the Megalodon tool. Through this technological deployment, a cable corridor exceeding 400 kilometers in total length was enabled, a distance equivalent to the linear extent of mainland Denmark. This route includes the wind farm’s interconnected cabling and more than 260 kilometers allocated to four export lines that will connect the offshore substations to the Polish coast.
The next phases of cable installation
Consequently, the completion of these complex heavy works represents the first stage of a comprehensive intervention by the construction firm. The organization plans to return its fleet to the Baltic Sea in order to begin the final laying of the suspended electrical infrastructure. Likewise, the execution of the upcoming phases will be distributed in a specialized manner among different units of the corporate fleet.
In this way, the BOKA Ocean vessel will assume responsibility for positioning the internal connections between the wind turbines in the offshore network. Meanwhile, the Ndurance vessel will be responsible for transporting and securing the export cables to shore. Company representatives expressed their satisfaction with the collaboration maintained with Ørsted and reaffirmed the commitment of the technical teams involved in the energy transition project.
Source and photo: Boskalis