09/01/2017

ISV Siem Moxie begins work on the HyWind Scotland floating wind farm

Siem Offshore Contractors’ industry leading accommodation and personnel transfer vessel Siem Moxie has begun work on the world’s first floating wind farm: Statoil’s HyWind Scotland.

Image: Siem

Siem Offshore Contractors (SOC) a global marine contractor specialising in offshore renewable energy and subsidiary of Norwegian Stock exchange listed Siem Offshore Inc. (SIOFF) has announced today that the industry leading ‘walk-to-work’ installation support vessel Siem Moxie went on charter on Statoil’s HyWind Scotland floating wind farm as of 24th August 2017.

The ISV Siem Moxie was launched in April 2014 and since launch has successfully performed over 14,000 individual connections to offshore structures both during the construction and operational phases, transferring in excess of 52,000 personnel via the in-built active heave compensated gangway in up to 3.5m significant wave height, while further supported by the on-board 3D motion-compensated crane. The ISV Siem Moxie has successfully performed a number of ‘ship-to-ship’ transfers as well and it is this capability along with the great weather resilience, which had led to the vessel being selected to support the world’s first floating wind farm commissioning phase.

The Statoil’s HyWind Scotland world’s first floating wind farm consists of five (5) 6MW Siemens Gamesa wind turbine generators, installed at Buchan Deep off the coast of Scotland, mounted on spar-buoy floating foundations. The project is expected to be fully commissioned by October 2017.

Regis Rougier, managing director of Siem Offshore Contractors, stated: “The utilisation of the ISV Siem Moxie represents the first serial access using a vessel in-built heave compensated gangway to a dynamically moving floating wind farm foundation. The benefits are expected to include an increase in the access weather window for operational maintenance planning as well as the construction commissioning versus more traditional smaller crafts such as crew transfer vessels. We firmly believe that the use of the more capable and weather resilient walk-to-work vessels such as the ISV Siem Moxie will directly contribute to a reduction in LCOE in the long term.”