Italy’s Saipem has completed the installation of multiple offshore wind turbine foundations for the Seagreen wind farm project offshore Scotland, despite delays due to an accident involving its flagship crane vessel Saipem 7000 last year.
The Italian engineering, construction and installation giant said on Tuesday that the installation work on 114 offshore wind turbine foundations has been completed for the landmark project.
The wind farm is being developed by Seagreen Wind Energy — a joint venture between the UK’s SSE Renewables and French giant TotalEnergies.
Saipem said it carried out the installation activities on behalf of the key client Seaway 7.
The £3 billion ($3.7 billion) Seagreen wind farm is set to become Scotland’s largest with 1.1 gigawatts of capacity when fully complete, enough “to power over 1.6 million homes” Saipem said.
The company added that the “installation of the foundations has been carried out by the Saipem 7000 vessel, one of the largest semi-submersible crane vessels in the world, during a series of offshore campaigns”.
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Gianalberto Secchi, chief operating officer of Saipem’s offshore wind business, noted that the completion of the installation project consolidates the company’s “strategic positioning in the offshore wind sector”.
Saipem 7000
SSE in November said that it had taken a £57 million ($67.8 million) hit buying high-priced power as a result of delays to the Seagreen offshore wind project, caused in part by an accident that required repairs to the Saipem 7000 last year.
The vessel was involved in a “lifting incident” last April after leaving Scotland for Norway for maintenance midway through its schedule for installing jacket foundations for Seagreen turbines.
Saipem said after a preliminary investigation that the main block wire broke during the test-lifting operation. The vessel returned to Scottish waters in June.
TotalEnergies bought its 51% stake in Seagreen in 2021 in a deal that marked the French supermajor’s first large-scale foray into offshore wind and forms part of a plan to reach 35 GW of renewable electricity capacity worldwide by 2025, with 12 GW of that it described as under development.