Alstom is involved in constructing a new offshore wind farm located 27km off the Suffolk Coast. The offshore wind farm will be known as the Galloper Wind Farm (GWF) which will be an extension of the existing and fully operational Greater Gabbard Wind Farm. The GWF will consist of up to 56 wind turbines with a potential to generate clean home grown energy for 1000s of UK homes.
Visser & Smit Hanab installed the HDPE cable ducts by using the Horizontal Directional Drilling (HDD) technique. The drilling was done using the 450 tons maxi type drilling rig. The landfall consisted of two HDDs. The HDPE 100 SDR 13.6 with outer diameter of 710mm was installed in the boreholes. The horizontal drilling length was 239 meters per HDD.
The soil conditions were among the difficulties that were tackled in this project. The presence of gravel near the beach was a good challenge to overcome. Visser & Smit Hanab successfully executed and completed this project to the satisfaction of the customer.