On Tuesday 12th of June our vessel BBC GERMANY dis-charged the first two of a total of 80 so called ‘transition pieces’ at the new berth No. 8 in Cuxhaven after a short voyage from Bremen where the loading took place one day before.
A transition pieces is part of an offshore wind turbine and lo-cated between the foundation below and the tower sections above. With a unit weight of 265 tons the pieces are 25.5 metres long and have a diameter of 5.9 metres at one end and 5.0 metres on the other end.
While the first voyage started with two pieces, all following trips are planned with six units.
The transition pieces are fabricated by German steel con-struction company AMBAU at their facilities in Bremen. Upon arrival at the Cuxhaven works the pieces will be blasted and painted before final outfitting. Then the pieces will be stored in upright position until being picked up by an installation ves-sel.
The units are made for the wind farms ‘Meerwind Ost’ and ‘Meerwind Sued’ which are located side by side 12 nautical miles northwest of the island of Helgoland in the German Bight (see picture). These wind farms will jointly consist of 80 wind turbines with a total power of 288 MW which upon its comple-tion by the end of next year will be sufficient to supply 360.000 houses. Compared to coal-fired
power plants this new installation will save CO2 emissions in a volume of 1 million tons each year.
With this shipment we established our new ‘NORTH EU-ROPEAN NEAR SHORE SERVICE’ to serve the offshore wind industry in the North Sea and Baltic Sea as well as offer a short sea service for project cargo.