The Orion is a colossus measuring 216 meters long, 49 meters wide and almost 17 meters deep. The ship was made in China and Germany, but the concept came from the engineers at DEME in Zwijndrecht. The Orion was christened on Friday evening in Nieuwdorp in the Netherlands, near the port of Vlissingen.
The ship is dangerous. Or at least if you have the ambition not to get lost. The elevator in the ship goes up six floors, and then there are two more stairs to get all the way up. There are also three floors down. There is even a badminton and basketball room on board. And there are fitness equipment.
The badminton and basketball hall. — © JHS
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”No other ship can do this”
But those fun facts are of course not the essence of this ship. The real raison d’être of the Orion is one that can count: without this ship, the new generation of heavy windmills at sea could not be built. “With this new ship, we will transport and install large foundation piles for wind turbines,” says Koen Vanderbeke, DEME’s operational director. “Windmills are getting bigger and can generate more energy, but this also makes the foundation piles of those windmills much heavier. In addition, many of those foundations have to be placed in soft ground, and not in a rock, for example, so that they have to be extra strong.”
–From Orion. — © Joris Herregods
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“The Orion has a loading capacity of about 30,000 tons, and the accompanying crane has a lifting capacity of up to 5,000 tons,” says Vanderbeke. “If you take the length of the ship, the carrying capacity, the space on the deck and the carrying capacity together, this is truly unique in the world. No other ship could currently install the foundations for the new German wind farm in the Baltic Sea, which is our first order.”
A second ship of this kind is on the way, and that is also from DEME. It is now under construction in Taiwan and will be completed in 2023. That ship is used for all kinds of assignments in Asia.
(Read more below the photos)
–Luc Vandenbulcke, general manager of DEME — © Joris Herregods
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–Koen Vanderbeke — © Joris Herregods
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Two thousand tons foundation piles
In a few weeks, DEME will use the Orion to install twenty-eight foundation piles of two thousand tons each for the Arcadis Ost 1 wind farm in the Baltic Sea in Germany. “To give you an idea of this: such a pole is as high as an apartment building,” says Koen Vanderbeke.
The Orion will transport three piles at a time in the Baltic Sea, because this is the most interesting option economically. Purely in terms of payload, the Orion could carry more piles at a time. But then additional moorings are needed (to fasten the piles), and that cost would not be efficient, because the twenty-eight piles are ready in the Baltic Sea, so the ship does not have to sail that far. Better to sail a few extra times than to invest in extra sea-fastening. Incidentally, the piles will be set thirty to forty meters deep in the Baltic Sea, calculated from the seabed.
–With this device the foundation piles of two thousand tons are lifted in the Baltic Sea. — © Joris Herregods
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–This kind of windmill foundation piles can be transported with DEME’s new ship. — © rr
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Largest wind farm in the US
The Orion will therefore first be deployed in Germany, after which the ship will go to the United Kingdom to dismantle old oil and gas installations. The ship will then travel to Virginia in the United States to install 176 foundations for one of the largest wind farms in the world.
Green Efforts
The Orion is a green ship. Not only in terms of color, but also in terms of energy consumption. The ship can sail on both LNG and alternative, clean fuels. The heat from the ship’s exhaust gases is converted into electrical energy. The evaporation of the LNG is then used to cool the entire accommodation.
–© JHS
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DEME gives shelter to families of Ukrainian workers
About 150 to 200 people will work on board the Orion, depending on the assignment. There are also some Ukrainians among them. In total, DEME employs about 140 Ukrainians worldwide. “Forty of those people are now employable. The rest of our Ukrainian employees are trapped in their own country because of the war,” says Luc Vandenbulcke, DEME’s general manager. “We are hosting 120 women, children and babies of our Ukrainian employees in a hotel in Varna, Bulgaria. We rented that hotel. This way the families of our Ukrainian employees can catch their breath there. We will fully bear the costs for the hotel. We want to take good care of our employees.”
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