Norway’s Glamox AS has won yet another contract to provide LED lighting to an offshore wind farm. This time, the job illustrates the many stops along the value chain that luminaires can take before reaching their destination at sea, which in this case is on platforms off the coast of England.
Oslo-based Glamox has agreed to provide about 800 marine-certified luminaires to Dutch electrical and digital automation company Bakker Sliedrecht. Working at its facilities in Sliedrecht in southern Holland, Bakker will bundle the interior and exterior luminaires along with cables, connectors, and junction boxes.
It will then send them off to Polish maritime engineering and services firm Navikon Sry based in the north of Poland in Świnoujście on the Baltic Sea, near Germany.
Navikon is building so-called “foundation platforms” that will sit at the bottom of 100 Siemens Gamesa wind turbine towers due to operate by 2026 at the Sofia Offshore Wind Farm in the Dogger Bank section of the North Sea. Dogger Bank is an expansive area of shallower water in the North Sea that spans U.K., Danish, Dutch, and German territory, while sitting closest to the U.K. (It takes its name from the Doggerland land bridge that once connected Britain to mainland Europe.)
Navikon is working as a subcontractor to Rotterdam, The Netherlands–based Van Oord, which is in charge of installing the platforms at sea, among other tasks. Before the platforms make their trip to the Sofia location, they will also stop in Denmark for further adjustments according to Thijs van Hal, head of main contracting for Bakker Sliedrecht. The first platforms are scheduled for installation in the third quarter of 2024.
Sofia Wind Farm is owned by German energy and utility company RWE. It plans to start the Dogger Bank operations in 2026. Each of the 100 turbines will have a capacity of 14 MW, for a total of 1.4 GW — enough to provide about 1.2 million U.K. homes with renewable electricity. Sofia will sit around 120 miles from the coast, spanning around 230 square miles, in water depth that ranges from 65 to 115 feet. The height of the turbines at the upper reach of the blade will be about 827 feet.
Glamox has been very active in the marine sector, although growth in its land-side sector outpaced offshore jobs in its last quarter. The job with Bakker Sliedrecht will mark at least its second foray into the Sofia Wind Farm and other locations in the Dogger Bank.
The two companies declined to reveal how much Bakker is paying for the 800 Glamox luminaires.
MARK HALPER is a contributing editor for LEDs Magazine, and an energy, technology, and business journalist ([email protected]).
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