Transportation, installation and burial of 94 inter-array cables (total length 167 km) at Borssele I & II by Van Oord using CLV Nexus and Dig-It trencher.
Van Oord was awarded a contract by Ørsted to perform the array cable installation works at the Borssele I & II offshore wind farm (752 MW), located approximately 23 km off the coast of Zeeland in the Netherlands. Van Oord’s scope covered transportation, installation and burial of the wind farm’s inter-array cable system that electrically interconnects the turbines and links them into the offshore collection system. Under the contract, Van Oord was responsible for installing and burying 94 inter-array cables with a stated total length of 167 km. Van Oord planned to use its dedicated cable-laying vessel (CLV) Nexus for installation activities, and its trencher “Dig-It” for the burial campaign. The burial scope included placing the cables to the required protection depth (reported as up to 2 metres) to support long-term cable integrity and operational reliability. Project execution was scheduled around the 2020 construction window for Borssele I & II. Subsequent project updates indicated that the installation campaign commenced ahead of schedule in February 2020 and that Van Oord installed the array cables using Nexus, with the burial campaign planned for completion using Dig-It. The contract positioned Van Oord as the principal offshore contractor for the physical installation and burial of the Borssele I & II inter-array cable network.