Scottish-based FoundOcean is pleased to announce it has been awarded the contract for the foundation grouting for Gwynt y Môr Offshore Wind Farm Limited, UK.
Gwynt y Môr is being built with an installed capacity of 576MW in Liverpool Bay, around 13km off the North Wales coast; it is one of Europe’s largest offshore wind farms currently in construction. The wind farm consists of 160 monopile foundations each housing a 3.6MW turbine; the monopile transition pieces will be grouted using BASF’s Exagrout Masterflow® 9500 cementitious grout.
Masterflow® 9500 exhibits many pioneering properties including zero autogenous shrinkage which provides long term volume stability and durability, the ability to be pumped at temperatures down to 0ºC thus lengthening the available OWF installation season and a rapid strength build-up to support increased installation rate and 28 day compressive strengths of 140MPa.
"We are delighted to have secured our second offshore wind farm contract with RWE group: Nordsee Ost is due to mobilise later this month, and the Gwynt y Môr grouting operations will mobilise in July," said Paul Burns, operations director for FoundOcean.
Following a visit to FoundOcean’s exhibition stand at Global Offshore Wind conference this month, Scottish Minister for Energy, Enterprise and Tourism Fergus Ewing said: "Scotland is a world leader in developing and investing in energy production. I congratulate FoundOcean on winning this contract. The fact that their Scottish workforce, based in Livingston, will be working to produce components for this Welsh windfarm just proves Scotland’s position as a global hub of innovation, investment and expertise in both the offshore renewables and oil and gas sectors."
Luc Westof, Key Account Manager – Wind Power at BASF commented, "We firmly believe in the superior qualities of Masterflow® 9500 and, as demonstrated by the selection of the material for Gwynt y Môr, it is fast becoming, in our opinion, the engineer’s choice in the offshore renewables market."