Offshore substations for major wind projects off the UK and Netherlands will be built in the United Arab Emirates following a $43m deal for Malaysia-based contracting group Eversendai.

The Kuala Lumpar-based group said it had been awarded two offshore wind contracts by main contractor Petrofac, one for the substation topside, jacket and piles for an unidentified UK project, and a second for jacket and piles for the Hollandse Kust Zuid (HKZ) Beta substation platform.

The UK project is almost certainly the 1.1GW Seagreen underway by SSE as the largest offshore wind farm so far in Scottish waters, with Petrofac given the deal to oversee offshore and onshore substations earlier this year. SSE and Petrofac have been contacted by Recharge for confirmation.

Eversendai claimed the offshore wind substation in the UK “will be the highest capacity in the world, and expected to generate clean energy that will be enough to power approximately one million homes in that region”.

Both projects will be fulfilled at what Eversendai – an oil & gas player that has big ambitions in offshore wind and has already worked on the HKZ Alpha platform – called its ‘state-of-the-art’ fabrication yard in Ras Al Khaimah in the United Arab Emirates.

If the UK project is confirmed as Seagreen, it is likely to underline local dismay among unions and some politicians in Scotland, who claim too much work on the country’s first batch of major offshore wind farms is going abroad.

The GMB Union in February slammed the Scottish government over ongoing “failure” to bring promised renewables sector jobs to Scotland, after domestic construction contractor BiFab announced further lay-offs at three of its fabrication yards due to a lack of orders.

Further details of the substations order follows the award last year of the preferred supplier agreement for turbines to Japanese-Danish OEM MHI Vestas, and the deal to supply the on- and offshore export cables for the first phase of the project, which was won by France’s Nexans.

Seagreen, which is sited some 27km offshore in water depths of 35-70m, was awarded to SSE Renewables by the UK Crown Estate in 2010 as part the country’s Round 3 auction and consented in October 2014, but further development was waylaid until November 2017 due to an ultimately unsuccessful legal challenge by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.

Wind

Malaysia's Eversendai to build UK and Dutch offshore wind substations