How The North Sea Will Help Power Europe. Energy Independence From Russia?

In 2024, Belgian transmission system operator Elia will start construction work on building the worlds first artificial energy island.
Britain’s New Super mine! https://youtu.be/22dIkWYUAxQ
The insane Fehmarnbelt Tunnel! https://youtu.be/yFf2IQIup2c

A dual purpose, artificial energy island the size of 12 football pitches.
It will have it’s own port for maintenance workers.
And even it’s own helipad.
A bold infrastructure project like no other.
Located 45km off the Belgian coast in the Princess Elisabeth zone, Belgians second offshore wind zone.
The island will bundle the export cables from the windfarms avoiding a spaghetti of cables going back to the Belgian mainland.
By centralising all the electricity produced by wind farms in the zone it will act as a giant hub as well as a hybrid interconnector point for the UK’s Nautilus link and Denmark’s Triton link which will involve a second energy island in the future.
The islands electrical infrastructure will combine the use of high-voltage direct current and high-voltage alternating current. Essentially acting like a giant transformer.
The energy collected from the nearby windfarms will be sent to the island via undersea cables where it’s then converted to high voltage electricity and sent back to the Belgian mainland or other countries as and when they are connected to the island.
The newly proposed wind farm at the Princess Elisabeth zone will have a capacity of 3.5 gigawatts. Enough electricity to power 3.5 million homes.
The Belgian North Sea will act as a giant power hub. Currently, the EU only has around 16 gigawatts of stored wind capacity but it has big plans to increase this to 300 gigawatts by 2050.
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A grant of €100 million euros has been secured from the European Commission’s “Recovery & Resilience Facility” which will allow Elia to start work on building the foundations for the island which is scheduled for early 2024, pending an environmental permit expected this year.
A 3D model of the island was showcased at the annual WindEurope event in April 2023, and received praise from the crown prince Frederik of Denmark as well as enthusiasm from heads of state at the second part of the North Sea Summit in Belgium. Also in April 2023.
The island is going to be constructed using giant prefabricated concrete caissons weighing over 22,000 tons each that will eventually be filled with sand and sunk to the sea floor.
At the fabrication yard on land, a “construction lane” will be made consisting of 5 stations for each of the construction stages. A bit like the process i showed in my previous video about the Fehmarn Belt Tunnel. Link in the description.
First stage will be the construction of the base slab.
Next will be the slip-forming of the walls.
After this, the installation of J-tubes and hang off room will take place.
Then it’s on to the construction of the roof slab.
And the last stage, will be the construction of the sea walls.
Once a caisson has fully cured, it’s loaded onto a semi submersible barge where it is then towed out to a launching area in the North Sea Port.
Subsequent caissons are towed to a nearby parking area where they are temporarily parked up, while they wait for their turn to be towed out to site.
To prepare the seafloor for the foundations, “Trailing suction hopper dredgers” are used.
Once prepared, large “fall pipe” vessels are used to lay the rubble foundations which the caissons will sit on.
The vessel named Simon Stevin, named after the famous Flemish mathematician, then goes around levelling the stones providing a flat base for the caissons to sit on.
Tugboats then tow the caissons that are waiting at the North Sea Port into position. Once a caisson is in place, anchors and winches are attached to it so that the next caisson can be pulled together.
When a caisson is in the correct position it is then fully ballasted with water to hold it in place.
A “DP2” multi-purpose vessel then fills the caissons joints and then uses it’s hopper dredger to pump in sand to force the water out which will weigh the caisson firmly down on the prepared seafloor.
Halfway through the caisson wall construction, the inner part of the island will be filled in with sand whilst work continues with laying and levelling the stone bed for the rest of the caissons.
A final layer of stone is then laid around the circumference of the island for additional “scour”

https://www.eliagroup.eu/

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