Europe’s wind farms will soon face a wave of critical end-of-life decisions, with almost 30% (86 GW) of the region’s installed wind capacity approaching 20 years of operation by 2030, according to a new report from Shoreline Wind, a premier provider of digital planning and simulation solutions for the wind industry.

Around 50 kilometres north of the island of Juist, the Nordseecluster is taking shape – a joint offshore wind project between RWE (51%) and Norges Bank Investment Management (49%). A ‘wedding’, as the successful installation of a substation onto its foundation is known, has now been celebrated at the offshore construction site. This special event could be witnessed twice in recent days, as the two substations of the Nordseecluster A, each around 40 metres long and 22 metres high, were successfully installed. One topside weighs around 1,800 tonnes, the other around 2,500 tonnes.

Netherlands headquartered Subsea Cable Assets (SCA) has announced it has won its first framework contract with German grid operator 50 Hertz Transmission GmbH, secured through a competitive European tender process, to deliver four of its newly designed cable storage and handling systems.

CRP Subsea, an AIS company, has announced it has secured a significant contract with Jan De Nul to supply cable protection systems for Vattenfall’s Nordlicht I wind farm located in the German North Sea.

Natural Power, a leading renewable energy consultancy and service provider, has announced it acted as technical adviser to Investment Manager Downing on the acquisition of the 42.5 MW Higher Witheven solar project in Cornwall.

A planned network outage threatened to halt operations at an onshore wind farm in Scotland, so engineered energy and temperature solutions provider Aggreko says it stepped in to supply a rapid, low-emission hybrid energy solution to keep all 13 turbines protected and performing.