Germany: Service operation vessel for Dutch Gemini project christened in Hamburg

The wind service operation vessel (SOV) for the Dutch Gemini project has been christened "Windea la cour" today in Hamburg. The vessel is to set sail to start operations at the Gemini offshore wind power plant this summer. Siemens has supplied 150 wind turbines with a capacity of 4 megawatts each and will service the offshore wind power plant for a period of 15 years. The specially designed, purpose built SOV "Windea la cour" is part of Siemens' advanced offshore wind service concepts developed to increase the uptime of the wind turbines. Innovative offshore service logistics help to bring down the costs of offshore wind power.

The SOV "Windea la cour" was built by Ulstein Verft Norway and has been chartered by Siemens for operations and maintenance support from Bernhard Schulte Offshore. In addition to being the end user of the SOV, Siemens also supplied a key system aboard the vessel. The Siemens BlueDrive Plus C propulsion system helps reduce CO2 emissions and fuel consumption.

This is the third Siemens-chartered SOV to be christened so far: In June 2015, Siemens christened the offshore wind industry s first two purpose-built SOVs: 'Esvagt Faraday' is supporting service operations at the Butendiek offshore wind power plant in North Sea and 'Esvagt Froude' is utilized for service at the EnBW Baltic II wind farm in the Baltic Sea. A fourth SOV, also chartered by Siemens from Bernhard Schulte, will be utilized for service operations at the Sandbank and Dan Tysk wind projects.