Work to prepare the seabed for the 116 turbines began in September 2015 and the first shipment of foundations arrived on site from the Netherlands last week.
Construction of the first foundation in the northwest quadrant of the site is planned to begin this week. The offshore construction work will be project managed from a temporary facility in Newhaven Port until the wind farm’s operations and maintenance base is completed in 2017, developer E.ON said.
The foundations are being installed by Copenhagen-based Swire Blue Ocean. The monopoles were designed by LICengineering and manufactured by Sif-Group
The 400MW project, being built by E.ON, the UK Green Investment Bank and Canadian energy company Enbridge, 13km off the Sussex coast between Brighton and Lancing. It will be the first offshore wind farm off the south coast of England.
Chris Tomlinson, E.ON development manager, said: “After almost six years of development, including community engagement, engineering and environmental surveys, it’s a really proud moment to finally be installing the first foundations. These foundations will be piled into the seabed and will act as a base for each of the 140-metre turbines, which we will start erecting in early 2017.
“I’m pleased that our highly skilled team have been able to overcome the poor weather conditions that we’ve faced over the last few weeks and continue with the construction of the wind farm as planned.”
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