Monopile Gripper – Svanen

Biggest monopile installation tool available

Van Oord’s top duo vessels Aeolus and Svanen successfully completed the Walney Extension offshore wind farm in August 2017. To achieve this success, a new advanced gripper replaced the previous pile gripper on the heavy lift vessel Svanen. We performed the design of the multifunctional central gripper, storage for a hydro-hammer, and deployment system for noise mitigation. Our teams made sure that the gripper was ready to use in 6 months, overseeing the whole process from design to fabrication.

The Svanen central gripper is currently the largest monopile installation tool available. The gripper is capable of handling piles up to 11m in diameter. It makes Van Oord HLV Svanen well-prepared for any large monopile installations in future offshore wind farm projects. Over 40 TWD engineers contributed to this large piece of fine machinery. It is a product of creativity and bright ideas accomplished by outstanding collaboration.

Project highlights

• First cable laying related scope of this magnitude for TWD
• Our designs enable maximum deck utilization and allow a complex cable laying operation
• VBMS was able to lay all in-field cables using the Stemat-Spirit