Westermost Rough Electrical Substation
In May 2014, Atlantique Offshore Energy (AOE) delivered an electrical substation for the offshore wind farm of Westermost Rough, thus confirming its positioning on the offshore wind farm market.
Following a thorough qualification process by DONG Energy, Atlantique Offshore Energy was chosen to carry out this project. AOE demonstrated its industrial capabilities, technical skills and project management process in accordance with the market requirements and the client’s expectations.
This project involved the detailed designing, the industrialization, the purchase, the manufacturing and assembling, the painting and the trials of the electrical substation (topside structure with jacket and piles foundations). Atlantique Offshore Energy was also tasked with the making of the transport barge and the mechanism to load packages on it.
Thus, in December 2012, the team in charge of the project at DONG Energy settled on Saint-Nazaire yard and began to write the first lines of DONG and Chantiers de l’Atlantique common history. This is when both the design offices and manufacturing workshop were regrouped on one and only site. We are conviced that bringing the designing and manufacturing activities phisically closer to one another is a major asset for the success of our projects and the cost reduction.
Coordinating the activities of manufacturing and assembling, which are taken care of by dozens of subcontractors is far from being a one time challenge for Atlantique Offshore Energy. Thanks to its extensive experience in complex shipbuilding projects management, a large network of suppliers and extremely qualified external co-workers part of a long-term collaboration with AOE, all the requirements for the realization of this project were already met.
“One of the main challenge of this project was,” according to E. Vermeillet, business manager, “was to quickly set up a collaboration between DONG Energy and Atlantique Offshore Energy teams, not to lose any time on the very short 17 months period before the delivery while meeting the technical expectation of the customer.”
F. Grizaud, Atlantique Offshore Energy Manager: “Once this project successfully achieved, Atlantique Offshore Energy decided to invest into new production capabilities. These [were made] operational in May 2015. They allow us to produce at least two electrical substations per year.”