Eneco

COMPANY PROFILE

2014

Eneco Luchterduinen

www. projecten.eneco.nl

An energetic community project Editorial: Roland Douglas

The 129MW Eneco Luchterduinen wind farm will be located 23km off the coast between Zandvoort and Noordwijk cities in the Netherlands.

A state-of-the-art project, Eneco Luchterduinen is pushing the boundaries of wind farm construction but it is perhaps the innovative engineering solutions and involvement with the local community that have been the some of the major success of the project so far…

When completed in 2015, the Luchterduinen offshore wind farm will supply green power for nearly 150,000 households. Currently being constructed

by Dutch company, Eneco and Japanese organisation, Mitsubishi Corporation, the wind farm will consist of 43 Vestas V1123.0 MW offshore turbines located 23km from the beach at Noordwijk, in the Dutch North Sea. In October, an important milestone was reached as the power cable from the offshore substation was bought to the

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beach and prepared for connection to the onshore cables which will take green power from the wind farm to the grid.

Total World Energy recently spoke to Dennis Sanou, Project Director at Eneco Luchterduinen and he says that the installation of the cable is almost complete but the team had to come through challenges from the weather as the cable was brought ashore.

“The successful milestone completed recently was the complete installation of the export cable, about 23 km from the

beach to the OHVS (offshore high voltage station) foundation. That has been installed and pulled in and now hangs off at the OHVS although it still needs to be trenched across its full length.

“We had a challenge with the remnants of Hurricane Gonzalo which hit our site last month while we were laying the last meters of cable and we just managed to safely secure and lay the cable on the seabed,” he says.

International contractor specialising in dredging, marine engineering and

Eneco Luchterduinen offshore projects, Van Oord, is the main contractor for the construction of the wind farm and the company used the vessel Ndurance of Boskalis for the cable lay as its own vessel was working on the infield cable of the wind farm.

Ndurance is 99 metres long and arrived at high tide, held in place with six large anchors on the sea floor and at the beach. It was important to complete the cable installation before the next high tide so the vessel could refloat. Fortunately, Gonzalo did not cause too much trouble and the operation was a success. “It did not impact us too much, no more than 30 minutes,” says Sanou.

A HISTORIC PROJECT The history of the Eneco Luchterduinen project goes back to 2008 when the application for the wind farms permit was started. In 2009 the application was given and over the next four years, changes were made and all legal and administrative processes were followed, until July 3 2013 when the permit became irrevocable.

Sanou began working on the project in 2012 and he says that design was the initial concern.

“I am responsible for the installation of the Luchterduinen offshore wind farm.

I came into this position after financial close which was at the end of 2012.

“We started at the end of 2012 and one of the first things you need to start

with is detailed design which took more than a year. Today, there are still some minor details to sort out because the design takes some time.

“In 2013, we still had an appeal to pass through certain authorities as there was an issue raised by some of the beach restaurants who objected to the presence of the wind farm but this turned out to be positive for us.

The decision was in our favour and we could go ahead with construction,” he explains.

This is not the first offshore project for Eneco; far from it. In another Dutch wind project, the company was responsible for the construction of the Princess Amalia Wind Farm, a 60 turbine wind farm, 23 km west of the village of Egmond aan Zee in the North Sea. Sanou also worked on this project, albeit for a different organisation, and says that experiences there have been beneficial for Luchterduinen.

“At that time I worked for Van Oord, the company that installed the Q7 Princess Amalia. Lessons learnt on that project are definitely incorporated in Luchterduinen for example, with the OHVS design and construction where the same joint venture building the OHVS on our project was present for Princess Amalia so knowledge is being kept on board. That project was years ago so some experience has left the company but now we have an excellent

new team working on Luchterduinen,” he says.

INNOVATIVE CONSTRUCTION What makes this project one of real significance for the offshore wind industry is the fact that new design elements with regard to its foundation piles have been used.

“At the moment, we are extremely delighted to share the exceptionally good news that we have all of the foundations in, well before the target date of 31 December. We are talking about 44 foundations, 43 are WTG (wind turbine generators) and one OHVS foundation. We are extremely happy that that has been successfully done although we are still waiting for some AS-built reporting from the main contractor but it looks ok,” Sanou explains.

“A major innovation improvement has been applied to the design and installation of the monopile foundation. We are working with a raised flange connection, without a transition piece. We are hammering the pile directly on the flange that is being used to connect the tower which is risky for sure but we have put so much engineering effort into that and we are extremely happy that this has turned out to be successful. This is definitely a major cost reduction that has been proven

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to be successful at Luchterduinen,” he says.

“There was another wind farm, Scroby Sands in the UK, where there was hammering on the flange but they still used a transition piece to overcome the idea of a direct connection between the flange that has just been hammered and the lower flange of the tower. We are now the first project in the world that is hammering on the actual connection that is going to be made. Everybody was afraid because the connections need to be within strict parameters and we are hammering with lots of force on these connections but everybody knew, once this was possible, you could establish great cost savings.”

ENERGETIC PARTNERS Away from construction, this project has been pushed through by two extremely strong and experienced partners, Eneco and Mitsubishi Corporation, both with a focus on sustainability, which makes it a logical step to build also a sustainable relation with the local stakeholders and communities in all phases or the project, also during the complete operation of 20 years.

“There is not a project in the world that runs flawlessly, you always have challenges and problems,” says Sanou.

“We made a lot of effort with public consultations, trying to listen to local people who live in the community, understanding what sort of problems we are creating for them. There is also an eight km land cable (constructed by Eneco daughter company, Joulz) that was installed and that runs through a densely populated area. As an energy selling company we were concerned about the impact on the people so Eneco and Joulz have put a lot of effort into community stakeholder management, public consultations and that has resulted in no further objections from the inhabitants so we are extremely

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happy there.

“Joulz’ work on the cable started in September 2013 and was completed in July this year and now the only work is the connection of the onshore and offshore cable on the beach in Noordwijk, which will be ready in November or early December.

“There are always a couple of people that are not happy with the wind farm because, on a good day, you will see it, even at 23 km but it has been very limited.”

In this project, the figures are perhaps some of the most important numbers for the community and often developers can overstate the eventual output of their projects but with Luchterduinen, Sanou says that the figures of green power for 150,000 homes are fact and not just selling points.

“That is fact. It’s not a wish, it’s a fact – we know the specifications of the machines, we know what they can do – these are proven machines working in Sweden, UK, Belgium etc., it’s a proven Vestas turbine. Its three megawatt, it’s not the biggest, there are lots bigger, but it’s a proven concept,” he says.

Perhaps the success of the project so far can be put down to effective management. The Eneco/Mitsubishi Corporation partnership has been a pairing that has seen two companies with similar cultures work together towards the same vision.

“When I joined the project, I had a celebration in the first week which surprised me because the celebration was for the completion of a project and I though ‘what project is that?’ because I’ve only just started for Luchterduinen but apparently this was the project called ‘looking for a partner’. We had an accountant, KPMG, which helped us finds an equal partner with an equal culture, focussed on renewable energy and after some discussions, it turned out that Mitsubishi Corporation (MC), coming all the way from Japan, matched very nicely with us. We like transparency,

we like openness, we like to talk about everything and this matched very nicely with the culture of MC. “Eneco provides personnel and knowledge and MC provides funds, half of the CAPEX and OPEX, but both companies are actively involved in the decision making for this project,” explains Sanou.

And even the partnerships that have developed with subcontractors have been very successful; take the relationship with Van Oord for example: “It’s a very professional company,” says Sanou “they have proven themselves in the past, it’s a big financially stable company and that is important for a company like ours. There are differences in opinion, at the end of the day we want a wind farm and the contractor wants to get paid, but there has never been a conflict that cannot be solved and we have proven that by being on schedule and according to contract specifications.”

A COMMUNITY PROJECT But perhaps the ultimate success for this project has been the way that the developers have managed to successfully work with the local community, in innovative new ways, to result in no real objections with the onshore cable, and even upliftment for the surrounding area.

Sanou says that the local people have been involved in every process of this development and construction, and even the name, ‘Luchterduinen’, is a result of community involvement.

“Luchterduinen is the historical name of the dune area at the location of the beach landing of the export cable.

“It’s not a name that we came up with. We had a competition in the community with the local people, as one of the ways to remain in contact with them, and we asked them for a good name. We had a lot of good suggestions and we have ended with a historical name from one of the residents of

Eneco Luchterduinen Noordwijk who won the contest coming up with the name Luchterduinen,” he says.

And involvement with the community is not something that is set to last only for the construction period of the wind farm. Eneco hopes that it can remain in constant contact with the community throughout the operational life of the wind farm and as such, is looking for ways to involve people. A result of the company’s desire to involve people is the Eneco Luchterduinen Fund, something which will help develop the community even further.

“We are not only building a wind farm, we are the neighbours for the next 20 years for the local environment and that is an important approach for Eneco Luchterduinen. That is the reason why we have put a lot of effort into building the relationships through consultations etc and also by inviting local people when we celebrate for example, with

the first drilling of cables, or when the offshore cable reached the beach,” says Sanou.

“We felt that it’s very important to be a good neighbour for 20 years, through the operational time of the wind farm so we created the Luchterduinen Fund which is allocated to project ideas every two years where we put in €90,000 and we just started the first round, inviting all of the inhabitants of the four coastal regions; Noordwijk, Zandvoort, Bloemendaal and Katwijk, to come up with ideas; sustainable ideas or ideas to make the coast a better place to stay, and we’ve had a great response. It’s exciting to see what people have come up with, we have had a few already and are open to more ideas until the end of November and then we’ll make a selection and vote, with the community, as to which idea should be realised.

“To give an example, electrical bicycles are becoming very popular in

Holland so I can imagine that people may request connections on the boulevard so people can recharge their bicycles. Or maybe there might be a request for solar panels on the roof of the municipality building; it’s all going to be related to sustainable energy and events to promote the coast and make it a more exciting place to stay,” he says.

This, along with the success of the wind farm, will hopefully result in a positive response over the coming years by as many local residents as possible, and also from the energy sector across the Netherlands but Sanou reminds that there is still much work to be done.

“We are not there yet, we are only half way. We still have to install all the turbines. The contract we have with Van Oord includes them making available a jack-up for Vestas to install the turbines,” he concludes.

Joulz High Voltage Partner in Energy Solutions

— Joulz is proud to be partner of Eneco Luchterduinen in designing and building the high voltage cable connection between beach pit and TenneT’s Sassenheim substation and related 150kV substation works for Eneco’s offshore wind park Luchterduinen.

For more information on designing, building and/ or maintaining high voltage connections and installations: Kerem Kaplan, kerem.kaplan@joulz.nl.

• Energy• infrastructures •—

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