Fugro has begun a four-month marine site characterisation campaign for Swedish energy group Vattenfall at two major offshore wind development sites located over 40 kilometres off the coast of Norfolk in the UK.
The resulting geo-data from Fugro's geotechnical investigations will feed into the ground model for the Norfolk Vanguard and Norfolk Boreas wind farms, which will have a total installed capacity of 3.6 GW, enough to power more than 3.9 million homes.
Working from its DP2 geotechnical drill ship Fugro Scout, Fugro has been performing surveys and sampling using its proprietary cone penetration testing system at both sites, and will carry out testing both in situ and at the company's soils laboratories in Wallingford, UK, and Nootdorp in the Netherlands.
The site characterisation work is split across two projects: the first will help Vattenfall optimise the wind turbine foundation engineering design; the second will assist Vattenfall in selecting the most efficient cable route from the onshore substation to the turbines.
