Date: February 2023

Beatrice Offshore Wind Farm is a commercial-scale wind farm in the Moray Firth in the North Sea, operated from its base at Wick Harbour.

The location enjoys constant high winds and is the perfect site for Scotland’s largest wind farm, with an installed capacity of up to 588MW, providing renewable power to over 450,000 homes. FoundOcean played an important role in the construction of Beatrice in 2019 – managing the onshore cement logistics and offshore grouting for 84 turbine and 2 offshore transformer module foundations. In the harsh conditions of the North Sea, even during cold months, FoundOcean efficiently and expertly delivered grouting services to this important project. Each turbine and transformer module sits on almost-identical four-legged jacket foundations where a jacket was placed over four pre-installed piles. After pile dredging, cleaning and levelling, grout was pumped into the annulus between the piles and the jacket lower legs via grout lines running through the jacket legs – a total of 344 foundation piles. The jackets were up to 81m high, so tall that National Grid power lines running over the River Tyne had to be raised temporarily to allow safe passage underneath during their transportation to the load-out port.

This project came with a number of firsts for FoundOcean. Several innovations saved time – and therefore money – on the construction. It was the first time a high strength material had been stored and transferred via silo storage on this scale. This significantly reduced the time taken to grout, as using silo storage reduced the overall grouting time per foundation. The transported material was also specifically designed for use with a Super Recirculating Jet Mixer (SRJM) rather than the conventional pan mixer, improving efficiency. Another first was FoundOcean’s factory-to-foundation grouting material tracking process. This process, now developed into FoundOcean’s proprietary BatchTrax® software, tracks the material from the factory, through the delivery chain, to its precise final location in a specific foundation leg. Clients are therefore given complete quality assurance transparency. 

An additional feature of the project was having dedicated onshore material storage. Using a dockside tank farm in Rotterdam to store grout prior to loading onto the resupply vessel significantly sped up resupply turnaround time. To manage onshore logistics effectively, FoundOcean appointed a quayside co-ordinator to give all stakeholders a single point of contact. This was advantageous because all areas were kept up to date and informed throughout the project. When working offshore, time is money and FoundOcean’s expertise contributed to the extremely efficient construction of Beatrice Offshore Wind Farm.