Van Oord Completes Foundation Installation at Baltic Power as Poland's First Offshore Wind Farm Moves Toward Commissioning

Van Oord has reached a critical milestone at Baltic Power, Poland's first offshore wind farm, by completing the transport and installation of all monopile foundations and transition pieces for the project. The contractor installed 78 monopile foundations and 76 transition pieces, a scope that represents the full substructure package for the wind farm and removes one of the most demanding items from the project's construction critical path. Foundation installation is consistently one of the highest-risk workstreams in an offshore wind build because it sets the geometric and schedule baseline for turbine erection and inter-array cable pull-in, which means the completion of this campaign directly improves schedule certainty for the remaining commissioning activities targeted for the second half of 2026.

 

Project Ownership and National Energy Significance

 

Baltic Power is being developed by a joint venture between Poland's ORLEN and Canada's Northland Power, and carries a planned capacity of up to 1.2 GW. Located 23 kilometres north of the Polish coast, the wind farm is expected to cover around three percent of Poland's national electricity demand and supply renewable energy to more than 1.5 million households once operational. The project also carries policy weight beyond its generation footprint, because as the first offshore wind farm to reach construction and near-commissioning stage in Poland, it effectively establishes the operational template that subsequent Baltic projects will benchmark against on delivery risk, supply chain mobilisation and execution performance.

 

Deployment of 15 MW Turbine Class Foundations

 

The wind farm is being built around the new 15 MW turbine class, which is currently the largest commercially deployed rating in the European market. The shift to 15 MW machines has a direct impact on foundation design, because monopiles must grow in diameter, wall thickness and length to support the increased nacelle and rotor mass, which in turn raises the demands placed on installation equipment. The Baltic Power campaign represents one of the early large-scale deployments of monopiles scaled for this turbine class in the Baltic, and the execution data generated from the installation sequence is likely to feed into design assumptions and installation methodology across the next generation of projects in the region.

 

Vessel Strategy and the Upgraded Svanen

 

Van Oord carried out the majority of the monopile installation using its heavy-lift installation vessel Svanen, which recently completed a major upgrade that included a 25-metre crane extension. Baltic Power is the first project executed with the upgraded configuration, and the additional lifting height and capacity were the enabling factors that allowed the vessel to handle the larger foundations required for 15 MW turbines. That upgrade is significant for the wider market because it extends the operational life and competitive relevance of an existing purpose-built asset at a time when installation vessel capacity is one of the tighter constraints in the European offshore wind build-out.

 

Read more: Bourbon Accelerates Fleet Rebuild With $180M OSV Investment After Restructuring Exit

 

Role of Mammoet and Supporting Lift Technology

 

Van Oord worked with heavy lifting and transport contractor Mammoet to manage the port-side marshalling of the foundations. Mammoet deployed its XXL monopile transport system to handle the foundations efficiently at the port and used its new MTC1600 crane, developed in collaboration with Van Oord specifically to serve the Baltic Power project, to transfer the monopiles between the quayside and the water. The development of a bespoke crane solution for a single project indicates the degree of engineering customisation now required to support the scale of next-generation monopiles, and it also reflects the increasingly close integration between installation contractors and heavy lift specialists at the upstream end of the offshore wind supply chain.

 

Transition Piece Installation and Partner Integration

 

The 76 transition pieces were installed by SAL's DP2 heavy lift vessel MV Lone, with a Van Oord team on board overseeing operations. Splitting the foundation and transition piece scopes across multiple vessel assets allowed the campaign to maintain throughput without creating a single point of failure in the installation spread. The integration of a third-party heavy lift vessel into the campaign also illustrates how contractors are increasingly combining in-house and chartered tonnage to manage the scale of Baltic construction programmes, where installation windows are shaped by weather exposure and vessel availability in a market competing for the same specialist units.

 

Client Perspective and Lessons Generated

 

Maciej Stryjecki, chief executive of Baltic Power, framed the project as both a privilege and a substantial technical challenge, noting that the installation of foundations for the largest turbine class currently available on the European market required significant upgrades to the installation fleet. His assessment that the experience and know-how gained will provide valuable lessons for future developments points to the broader transfer value of the project for Poland's offshore wind pipeline. Maurits den Broeder, managing director of offshore energy at Van Oord, emphasised that close cooperation with the client and partners was central to efficient delivery, reflecting the increasingly collaborative contracting models that large-scale offshore wind projects now depend on.

 

Van Oord's Pipeline Position in Poland

 

Baltic Power is Van Oord's first offshore wind project in Poland, but it is already being positioned as the entry point into a longer-term market presence. The contractor is preparing for its next major Polish assignment at the Baltica 2 Offshore Wind Farm, developed by PGE Baltica and Ørsted, which further consolidates Van Oord's role in the Baltic construction cycle. Securing back-to-back major project awards in a single geography is commercially significant because it allows contractors to amortise mobilisation costs, retain specialist teams locally and build relationships with port operators and regional suppliers, all of which compound into competitive advantages as Poland's offshore wind pipeline continues to expand.

 

Implications for the Broader Baltic Build-Out

 

The completion of the Baltic Power foundation campaign carries implications that extend well beyond the project itself. Poland is moving from the planning phase to active construction delivery across multiple offshore wind farms, and the Baltic Power execution record provides the first operational reference point for developers, financiers and regulators assessing future project risk. The combination of upgraded installation vessels, bespoke heavy lift equipment and integrated multi-contractor campaigns demonstrated at Baltic Power is likely to define the delivery template for the rest of Poland's near-term offshore wind programme, and by extension will influence how the wider Baltic region manages the transition to 15 MW and larger turbine classes.