Offshore Marine Management (OMM) has been awarded a contract by RWE Innogy to deliver cable repair and an option for maintenance services to the German Nordsee Ost offshore wind farm.

The five-year agreement will involve OMM working in collaboration with the firm to provide essential structural and subsea services on its 295MW farm, situated close to the Heligoland coast in the North Sea.

Work, on around 60km of cable, will be provided by OMM supported by both its Hamburg office and UK head office in Cambridge.

The scope of the work will include inter-array cable procedures; a 24hour technical support line; fault detection; emergency action responses; and repair operations as required.

John Lawton, Director of Offshore Marine Management, said: “We will be working hand-in-hand with the RWE team to ensure the project benefits from our technical expertise and many years of experience in cable repair and maintenance. As well as our ability to respond quickly with flexible solutions, we will also provide around the clock support with OMM experts on hand to respond and react to any maintenance needs.”

“The cables are the central nervous system of the wind farm which makes it an essential element for its safe and economically efficient operation”, explains Sven Schulemann, General Manager of the Nordsee Ost wind farm at RWE Innogy. “In Offshore Marine Management we are pleased to have found an expert partner for our first wind farm off the German coast.”

RWE Innogy is constructing the windfarm around 35 kilometres to the north-east of the island of Heligoland in the German North Sea region. With 48 multi-megawatt wind turbines, constructed in water depths of up to 25 metres, it will have a total output of around 295 megawatts.

The wind turbines will produce sufficient power to supply the equivalent of about 320,000 households annually.