During November 09 MPI Resolution completed her foundation operations in the Thanet offshore wind farm after successfully installing 84 No Transition Pieces (TP’s) and J-tube assemblies. TP’s and j-tubes were loaded, 6 units at a time at the Port of Vlissingen, from barges transporting the components by river from the fabricators facility in Hoboken, Belgium. MPI Resolution’s main crane was used to self load all components.

On this project the transitions were installed sometime after the monopiles and as a result marine growth on the piles was an issue. Initially, the growth was removed by diver operations, working from MPI Resolution; however, this was a very time consuming method, up to 36 hours critical path works. To improve the speed at which the growth could be removed, MPI worked with an Aberdeen based pressure cleaning organisation to develop a bespoke piece of kit to remotely remove the growth which proved to be very successful, cleaning the piles regularly in about 2 hours. This time saved, substantially reduced the overall period per TP installation.

In early November, MPI Resolution returned to her home port, Tees Offshore Base ,where she underwent the transformation from foundation duties to wind turbine generator (WTG) duties. On the 1st December MPI Resolution departed for Dunkirk and the first loadout of wtg components. The deck arrangement provided during the mobbing period at the Tees allows  up to 9 No complete sets of Vestas V90, 3.0 MW turbines to be loaded. For the first time, MPI Resolution is configured to carry and install  27 individual blades, 9 No one piece towers and 9 No nacelles. We believe this is the first time ever for such WTG numbers to be carried at any one time ,we also believe no other vessel in the industry todate, has the capacity to carry the same load.