Third of wind farm foundations installed

The £700m Humber Gateway farm is located in relatively shallow waters five miles off Spurn Point and will consist of 73 3MW turbines in an area nearly 10 miles square.

So far 24 tubular steel monopiles have been driven into the seabed to form the bases for the turbines, with another 49 to be installed in April.

Due to the scale of the work E.ON’s operations team, which is based in a new £3m facility on Grimsby Fish Dock, is taking on an extra 13 people.

North Sea Services which manages E.ON’s fleet of vessels have recruited seven people from the local area to crew and maintain the vessels, with three more skippers needed in the next few weeks.

Matt Swanwick, project manager at E.ON, said: “We’ve hit significant milestones in the successful development of the Humber Gateway Wind Farm and hope to continue this trend until its proposed completion in 2015. So far, this has proved to be an important project for the area, creating a number of job opportunities and business for locally-based companies during the construction process.

“The wind farm will be one of the UK’s largest offshore sites, generating enough clean, green electricity to power up to 170,000 homes in the area.”

Two vessels, the Spirit of Hoton and Spirit of Sunthorp, have recently been delivered to the site and will shortly be deployed for operations. These are two of three vessels being built by UK based Alicat Workboats, and will be used for transporting personnel and goods to the wind farm during construction and operation. A third vessel, the Spirit of Turmarr, will be delivered next month.