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Van Oord tests Deep Dig-It trencher

By: Tom Russell 09/03/2020 Van Oord

Equipment General

Van Oord has designed and built a new Deep Dig-It , a gigantic and remotely controlled trencher, to deploy on the Hollandse Kust Zuid grid connection project being built by TenneT. Van Oord, being part of the Van Oord-Hellenic Cables consortium, is conducting final tests with this enormous machine in the Alexiahaven (harbour), in preparation for the actual installation of the sea cables in July.

The Deep Dig-It is a so-called “Tracked Remotely Operated Vehicle” (TROV), which drives unmanned over the seabed, creating a deep trench for the cables, while simultaneously inserting the cables and then closing the trench again. The new trencher is among the largest and most powerful machine in its class. The trencher weighs 125.000 kilos, is more than 17 metres long, well over 8 metres high, and 11 metres wide. It has an installed power of 2,500 HP, making it possible to bury cables into very hard soils. It is capable of burying cables to depths of up to 5 metres

The Deep Dig-It will be controlled from Van Oord’s offshore installation vessel MPI Adventure, which is equipped with a crane that launches and recovers the Deep Dig-It into the sea.

TenneT awarded the Van Oord-Hellenic Cables consortium in 2018, to build the connection from land to sea for the Hollandse Kust Zuid offshore grid project. The consortium is installing and burying the sea cables crossing the entrance to Europe’s busiest freight port, the port of Rotterdam. The project will be completed in 2022: Alpha (700 MW) in 2021 and Beta (700 MW) in 2022, to transmit electricity generated by offshore wind farms to for 1.6 million households.

The Hollandse Kust Zuid offshore wind grid project is 22 kilometres off the coast of the Dutch province of Zuid-Holland. Subsea cables will connect two offshore platforms with the Maasvlakte high voltage substation and the Randstad 380 kV South ring. It will transmits energy generated by the Hollandse Kust Zuid 1&2 and Hollandse Kust Zuid 3 & 4 ashore.

For more information on offshore wind farms worldwide, click here.

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Van Oord tests Deep Dig-It trencher

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