Lowestoft-based Turner Iceni, the renewable energy vessel specialist, has been awarded a contract exceeding £4 million by ScottishPower Renewables to provide support for the construction of the East Anglia ONE offshore windfarm.

Turner Iceni will provide crew transfer vessels for the construction and commissioning phases of the £2.5 billion windfarm. The company will support ScottishPower Renewables and its contractors 365 days per year, utilising up to 3 vessels, helping to support 50 jobs.

The scope of the contract will include the transfer of light plant, tools, spares and personnel to and from the offshore wind turbines, the offshore substation and met mast locations.

Charlie Jordan, ScottishPower Renewables Project Director for East Anglia ONE, said: “We are now only a few weeks away from the first components of the windfarm being installed offshore on the East Anglia ONE project, after several months of good progress being made on the onshore cable and substation work. Turner Iceni will have an important role to play in making sure that our offshore work programme is successfully delivered, and the fact that they have a strong team based in Lowestoft was an added bonus for us. With this contract in place, and work due to start soon on our new Operations and Maintenance facility, it is fantastic to see activity levels increasing in Lowestoft to support the windfarm.”

Richard Thurlow at Turner Iceni said: “We are delighted to have been awarded the contract to supply CTV’s for the construction and commissioning phase for the East Anglia ONE project, Turner Iceni have been committed to the local area ever since we started operating in 2009.  Both vessels ScottishPower Renewables has chartered were built in Great Yarmouth, will be crewed by local people and operated from our Lowestoft base close to the new East Anglia ONE Operations and Maintenance facility.  From the outset ScottishPower Renewables set a very high UK content target for the project, we are pleased to be able to help towards achieving this goal”.

ScottishPower Renewables’ East Anglia ONE offshore windfarm is being constructed 30 miles off the Suffolk coast. Once operational in 2020 the 102 Siemens 7MW turbines will provide enough clean energy to power the equivalent of almost 600,000* homes, which is the majority of households in Norfolk and Suffolk.

Notes to editors:

About East Anglia ONE:

East Anglia ONE will see 102 wind turbines installed in the southern North Sea, approx. 30 miles off the coast. The overall investment will be in the region of £2.5 billion, and the project is planned to meet the annual electricity demands of the equivalent of nearly 600,000 homes*. Construction is planned to commence in 2017, with the first turbines installed by 2019, and hopes that the project will be fully operational during 2020.

East Anglia ONE Offshore Windfarm project is likely to include:

• Offshore wind turbines and foundations (102 wind turbines to provide an installed capacity of 714 megawatts).
• An offshore substation to collect the electricity from the turbines and transform it to a form suitable for transfer to shore.
• Two offshore export cables, each around 85 km in length, to transfer the electricity to shore.
• A landfall site with onshore transition pits to connect the offshore and onshore cables.
• Six onshore underground cables, each of around 37 km in length, to transfer the electricity from landfall to an onshore converter station.
• An onshore substation adjacent to the existing substation at Bramford, Suffolk, to connect the offshore windfarm to the National Grid.

*Based on the following calculation: 714 MW (installed capacity) x 0.367 “offshore wind” average load factor (Digest of UK Energy Statistics) x 8,760 hours (hours per year)/3,900kwh (average domestic annual consumption) = 588,578 homes powered equivalent