SHI delivers world’s largest wind farm installation ship

JULY 26, 2012 — Samsung Heavy Industries reports that its Geoje, South Korea, shipyard has delivered Pacific Orca, the world’s largest wind farm installation vessel, to Singapore based Swire Pacific Offshore.

Swire Pacific’s Danish based subsidiary, Swire Blue Ocean, has a contract from a consortium of Vattenfall and Stadtwerke München/SWM that will see the vessel used to transport 80 Siemens wind turbines for the DanTysk Offshore Wind Farm, 69 km west of the island Sylt in the German North Sea.

Ordered in July 2010, Pacific Orca is 161 m long, 49 m wide and 10.4 m high and has six 105 m jacking legs, that will extend a maximum of 80 m below the hull.

It is capable of transporting and installing 12 wind turbine units of 3.6 MW and allows installation of wind farms to a depth of 60 m, in winds of up to 20 m per second and waves up to 2.5 m high.

CEO Roh In-Sik of Samsung Heavy Industries said, “The fact that we have now successfully built this world’s largest wind farm installation vessel guarantees our competitiveness in future bids. We also expect that this achievement will create synergies between the shipbuilding business of Samsung Heavy Industries and the wind power business, which is one of the promising renewable energy businesses.”