Samsung Heavy Industries delivers 'Pacific Orca' to owners Swire Pacific Offshore
Samsung Heavy Industries won an order to build Pacific Orca in July 2010. Pacific Orca is 161m long, 49m wide and 10.4m high, and as the world’s largest wind farm installation vessel, it is capable of transporting and installing 12 units of 3.6MW.
It also allows installation of wind farms to a depth of 60m, which is the deepest in the world, as well as the installation of ultra-large wind farms with a capacity of 10MW or higher, which are being developed in the industry to meet the demand for larger wind farms.
Existing wind farm installation vessels are fixed at the sea bottom with jack-up lags embedded in the vessels, and the installation work is performed after vessels are floated to minimize the impacts of tides and waves.
The vessel built by Samsung Heavy Industries is floated up to 17m above sea level, using six legs, and the 1,200t crane embedded on the vessel allows the installation of power generation towers, power generation rooms and wings.
In particular, the vessel allows the installation of wind farms under extreme conditions with the velocity of 20m per second and waves that are 2.5m high.
The wind farm installation vessel is a new special vessel for which demand is expected to grow as the focus of the wind power generation market shifts from in-land wind farms to offshore wind farms.