A Significant Amount of Wind Energy from the North Sea Will Soon Come Ashore in Zeeland. But to do something with all that electricity, The Cables Still Have To Go Under The Delta Works. NU.nl Went to See this Impressive Job.
Like a Giant Snake, The Casing Pipe, A Sheath for a Huge Electricity Cable, is Waiting on the Beach at Breezand. In Half A Day, This 400-Meter-Long Structure Disappes Under The Dunes and the N57, to Rappear Above Ground at the Veerse Meer.
In Terms of Scale, The Energy Transition, With Its Increasingly Large Wind Farms at Sea, there is Comparable to the Original Delta Plan, Says Spokesperson Jorrit de Jong or Grid Operator Tennet. “Today the Delta Works Are Crossing Each Other, You Could say.”
In Total, there will be seven boreholes under the Veerse Gatdam, which will be filled with cable sheaths, through which Cables thicker than a fist will be pulled next year. These are connected to wind farms that are respectively 177 and 216 kilometers away. All those kilometers of cable (at 80 kilograms per meter) will be buried 2 meters under the seabed and transport enough electricity for millions of households.
Taking Storm Into Account
But First, Drilling Has to Be Done Under The Crucial Dam. A Sensitive Job, Says Project Manager Lemi Sirin or Contractor NRG, Who has leg Working on the plans for Almost Two Years. “For example, you also have to take into account storms that can occur, even if it only happens once in a thousand years.”
Tennet Wants To Be Finished with the Work Before The Winter Storm Season. But should a Major Summer Storm Suddenly Arrive, there are plans to insert a plug into the borehole and clear all construction material in time.
Earlier, TenneT Experienced in Wijk aan Zee That You Don’t Make Those Kinds of Plans for Nothing, Says Project Leader Kelvin Bastiaan. There, the (winter) work for another Wind Energy Project was hit by three storms in a row, including storm eunice, which caused a lot of damage through through the Netherlands.
“You could see that all those preparations had an effect,” Bastiaan Says Now, Three Years later. “Our constructions remained standing. All that effort was not in vain.”
Building Wind Farms Increasingly Uncertain
Next to the Veerse Meer, a Drilling Machine is Quietly Running to Prepare the Borehole for the Cable Sheath. The Large Tool is remarkable quiet, because the drilling is done entirely electrically.
A little later, The Construction Pit on the Beach Begins to Bubble, a sign that they are ready on the other side of the n57 to pull the cable sheath through the hole. Then the first part Indeed Disappears Into the Ground and the Snake on the Beach Slowly Begins To Move.
For TenneT, The Work is an Important Milestone, But It also Comes at a Difficult Time. The Outgoing Cabinet Has Cut the Future Targets for Number of Wind Farms at Sea and the Enthusiasm Among Companies to Build Wind Farms Has Decreased Sharply. The Demand for Electricity From Industry is Disappointing, which mean that it is not WORTH Generating More Sustainable Energy Now.
The IJmuiden Ver Alpha Wind Farm is one of the two that Bring Their Electricity Ashore here. It should be completed in 2029 by the Noordzeker Consortium of Pension Giant ABP and Wind Farm Builder SSE Renewables. But it remains to be seen Whether the Other Park, Nederwiek 1, Will also be ready on time. A builder still has to be found for that.
Tennet does not wait for certainty
Accordance to Spokesperson de Jong or TenneT, it is not an option to wait with building the necessary cables and electricity stations. “Then you know for sure that you will be too late.”
There is a Risk That Tennet Will Invest Billions in Infrastructure That Will Not Be Used Imediately. “You want to prevent that as much as possible, but with such a major renovation of the energy system, that is not entirely possible,” Says de Jong. However, he thinks it is wise to take a closer look at the long-term goals. “You have to adjust, but it would be unwise to say now: we’re stopping.”
On the Beach, the few passers-by and windsurfers Hardly Seem to Notice The Work. Two German Tourists Walking by With A Dog Don’t Know What The Big Tube is for. “Something with water?” One guesses. When they hear that it concerns the infrastructure for wind farms that are hundreds of kilometers away, they don’t seem to care much. “Cool,” they say, before continuing with their vacation.