Hornsea 3 Offshore Wind Farm - Onshore cabling and Primary HDD contracts

Purpose

Hornsea 3 is a new offshore wind farm development that could produce enough low-cost, clean, renewable electricity to power around 3.2 million UK homes, making a significant contribution to the UK Government’s ambition of having 50 GW offshore wind in operation by 2030 as part of the British Energy Security Strategy.

Hornsea 3 will be located in the North Sea, 160km from the Yorkshire coast. We are working alongside VolkerFitzpatrick to deliver the Hornsea 3 onshore cable works and Primary Horizontal Directional Drilling (HDD) contracts. The contracts will see the installation of 240km of onshore cables that will connect the offshore wind farm from the landfall at Weybourne in Norfolk to the Norwich Main National Grid Substation.

What we are doing

We are delivering all the civil works associated with the 240km cable installation and National Grid connection, the cable installation itself and the reinstatement of land following the installation of the HVDC cables, including tree and hedgerow planting. The onshore cable corridor is typically 50m wide within the DCO order limit of 80m and the cable route is over 50km long.

We are also delivering the primary HDD works, forming a critical part of the project, they include approximately 16 drills of between 200m and 600m. This scope is managed and delivered by our specialist in-house trenchless crossing division VolkerTrenchless Solutions.

The HDD locations cross a number of obstacles which include roads, woodland, rivers, water courses and ditches, two railways and multiple utilities including the onshore cables for Dudgeon Offshore Windfarm along with the newly planned new Dogger Bank cables from Vanguard & Boreas projects. The Hornsea 3 Project also has several crossing points with highways intervention schemes.

Project successes

Our team was awarded this contract following a successful collaboration between VolkerWessels UK and Ørsted on the £35m Hornsea 2 Offshore Wind Farm Onshore Cable installation contract. On Hornsea 2 we delivered all the civils works associated with the 38km onshore cable route. We are proud to have played our part in connecting the world's largest offshore wind farm which will generate clean electricity for over 1.3 million UK homes and businesses.

Our team is building on the excellent work done at Hornsea 2 to deliver another safe and sustainable project at Hornsea 3. Our work will support Ørsted in their mission to be the world’s most sustainable energy company.

When it is fully online, Ørsted’s Hornsea zone – comprising Hornsea 1, 2 and 3 – will have a total capacity of in excess of 5 GW. This will be the world’s largest offshore wind zone, producing enough low-cost, clean, renewable electricity to power more than five million UK homes.