Tideway BV, a subsidiary of the Belgian dredging, environmental and marine engineering group DEME, has been awarded a design and build cable installation contract by DONG Energy for the Hornsea Project One offshore wind farm.

For this project, Tideway will deploy DEME’s newest DP3 subsea cable-laying vessel ‘Living Stone’, which is currently being built by the Spanish shipyard LaNaval near Bilbao, Spain. Delivery of the vessel is scheduled for April 2017.

The installation scope of work for Tideway includes cable-laying, pre-trenching, backfilling, presweeping, route preparation and rock placement of three high voltage subsea power cables from the shore to three different offshore substation platforms, as well as the installation of two interlink cables.

The power cables will be pulled ashore near Horseshoe Point immediately south of the Humber Estuary. Due to the length of the three subsea power cables (134 km, 140 km and 152 km), DONG Energy has to install a reactive compensation platform between the three substations and the shore. The interlink cables are 13 km and 14 km.

“The offshore project execution starts in 2017 with the engineering route survey and the last export cable will be laid and protected mid 2019,” the company said in a press release.