Sofia Offshore Converter Platform arrived and installed

The Sofia HVDC platform has been transported from Indonesia (the Seatrium yard in Batam) to the Dogger Bank area and has been successfully installed in the Sofia Wind Farm area. This is an important milestone for the Sofia Offshore Wind Farm.

The 1.4 gigawatt (GW) Sofia Offshore Wind Farm is an UK offshore wind farm sited on the shallow central area of the North Sea, known as the Dogger Bank. Currently, the Sofia offshore converter platform is one of the largest offshore HVDC platforms in the world, and with 195 km offshore one of the farthest from shore.

Iv has performed the design and engineering of the Sofia offshore converter platform (topside and jacket) and procured the auxiliary systems’ equipment for Seatrium. In recent years, Iv worked intensively from the HQ in Papendrecht and on the yard in Batam. It’s size and technical complexity makes the Sofia project one of the most special projects for Iv to date.

A boost in the energy transition

The development of the Sofia Offshore Wind Farm is an important one in the UK’s ambitions on the road to renewable energy sources and thus a major boost for the energy transition. The total amount of power Sofia is likely to generate would be enough to potentially provide almost 1.2 million average UK homes with their annual electricity needs. At around 6 TWh per annum that is almost half of all the electricity used in the North East each year.

Once operational, the energy generated by Sofia’s turbines will save more than 2.5 million tonnes of carbon emissions per year when compared to the use of fossil fuels in the UK (source: RWE). We look forward with great enthusiasm and confidence to the offshore commissioning and final completion of this ambitious project.