by Jerome a Paris
Mon Jun 24th, 2013 at 10:42:18 AM EST
Last week, I did another site visit on the construction site of an offshore wind farm - this time onshore, at the "marshaling harbour" in Ostende (Belgium) for the C-Power project (which financing we helped arrange in late 2010).

Construction is almost over and these were the last 2 turbines to be installed. Go below the fold for more pictures.
This is one blade (from a 126m rotor), and the people standing underneath give you an idea of the size of these things...

This is the full rotor:

and a close up:

The rotor, as you can see, is assembled onshore and carried on a barge before being installed offshore in one go (which requires 2 cranes - a big one to carry the rotor, and a smaller one to help orient it correctly during the lift). The crane that you see in the background of some of the pictures here does the same to transport the rotor from the harbor to the barge (the rotor brought in with the blades transported separately, and assembled on the site here).

The nacelles:

and a close up...

And the view from the top...

And, as a bonus, an Alstom prototype (the first to be installed offshore, on the Belwind site, after the first one installed on the seashore in St Nazaire last year) was nearby:


As you can see, it will be transported and installed using a different methodology - in that case, the nacelle, rotor and two blades are assembled onshore (in the so-called "bunny" position), transported like this on a barge, and raised on the tower by a crane. A separate lift is then required to install the last blade). The nacelle was supposed to be installed earlier this month, but bad weather has delayed the installation of the jacket foundation by a few weeks.
The Belgian offshore wind sector will continue to be busy as construction gets going on the third project, the 216 MW Northwind project (which we also helped finance last year), which will use Vestas V112 turbines. I'll be sure to post pictures if there is a site visit...
(Note - there's plenty of nice pictures on C-Power's own website)