Jan De Nul signs Ørsted’s Hornsea 3 export cable contract

Jan De Nul Group and Ørsted have signed the export cable contract for the Hornsea 3 offshore wind farm in the UK. Jan De Nul Group will be responsible for the seabed preparation, transport, installation and protection of 350 km of DC export cables connecting the wind farm to the UK electricity grid.

The Hornsea 3 offshore wind farm is located 160 km off the Yorkshire coast in the UK. With its 2.9 GW capacity, this wind farm will become the largest individual offshore wind farm to date and will bring the total capacity of the Hornsea offshore wind zone to 5.4 GW, the world’s largest.

The two DC export cables will have a combined length of 350 km and connect the wind farm to the national electricity grid. Hornsea 3 will generate enough renewable electricity to power the homes of 3.3 million British households.

Wouter Vermeersch, manager offshore cables at Jan De Nul Group: “We are proud to support Ørsted in building the world’s largest individual offshore wind farm by connecting 2.9 GW of renewable energy capacity to the UK’s national grid. Thanks to our collaboration with Ørsted, which includes recent projects such as the monopile installations for Gode Wind 3 and Borkum Riffgrund 3 in Germany, we keep on constructing the energy transition together.”

Thanks to its extensive and diverse offshore fleet, Jan De Nul Group provides the optimal services to help its customers in their transition to renewable energy. For the installation and protection of the DC export cables, the company is going to deploy several vessels. Cable-laying vessels Isaac Newton and Connector will transport and install the cables, and to protect the cables a variety of burial solutions will be used including the rock-installation vessel Simon Stevin which will install up to 150,000 tonnes of rock to protect the cables. The works will start in 2025 and are expected to be completed early 2027.