10.06.2011

Lifting incident at Mostyn Port

Reports are coming in of a lifting incident involving parts of a wind turbine at the Port of Mostyn on the Dee Estuary in North Wales. The incident occurred early Tuesday morning at the Walney II offshore wind farm.

The 3.6 MW wind turbines arrive at Mostyn harbour, North Wales, directly by barge from Esbjerg, Denmark. The main tower is assembled first, followed by the turbine nacelle, hub and finally the three blades are fitted. It is thought that the incident involved one of the 80 tonne, 25 metre turbine top towers which was dropped during lifting.

A statement from the main contractor Seimens said:
“At 03.00 on Tuesday 7 June an incident occurred, while moving a tower at Mostyn Port for the Walney II offshore wind farm. No one was hurt but some equipment has been damaged. Siemens is conducting an investigation.‬”

The Walney Offshore Windfarm project is located approximately 15km west of Barrow-in-Furness in Cumbria. The project consists of Walney 1 and Walney II each with 51, 3.6 MW turbines, giving a total capacity of 367 MW.

Both Walney 1 and Walney 2 have been planned to be constructed sequentially, leading to periods of intense construction activity, particularly during Walney 2 when parallel installation activities shorten the construction timeframe. The crane barges, jack-up vessels and tugs will be working primarily out of Barrow and Mostyn harbours.

The rotor diameter of the turbines is 107 metres for Walney 1 and 120 metres for Walney 2 with a maximum height of 150 metres from blade tip to sea level. The total area of the development is 73 square km.

The turbines are being supplied under a joint agreement between Dong Energy and Siemens Energy which entered into a supply agreement for the supply of up to 500 offshore wind turbines with a total capacity of up to 1,800 megawatts in March 2009 – the world’s largest supply agreement at the time.