by Trevor Sturgess

Plans for the world’s largest offshore wind farm edged closer on Wednesday, with the go-ahead for ships and crew to lay its foundations.

The consortium developing London Array off the Thanet coast has announced that contracts have been signed to provide manpower and vessels for the installarion of foundations and turbines for the first phase.

MPI Offshore, a subsidiary of Dutch-based shipowning Vroon Group, will provide MPI Adventure, a vessel being built in China. The ship will transport, lift and install more wind turbines and their foundations than current vessels. It is expected to start operations in April 2011.

A second firm A2SEA will supply the Sea Worker, a jack-up barge that is likely to be on site from March 2011.

Richard Rigg, London Array’s project director, said: "These are the final major construction contracts to be signed for London Array, which has now moved as a project from the development phase into full construction.

"These vessels are critical to the successful installation of the wind turbines and their foundations and we are delighted to be working with such experienced contractors."

When completed, the scheme will be the world’s first 1GW offshore wind farm. It will be sited in the Thames Estuary some 12 miles off the Kent coast, and linked to a sub-station at Graveney, near Faversham. The project is expected to create jobs in East Kent.

The project will supply enough power for around 750,000 homes - or a quarter of Greater London homes - and displace the emission of 1.9m tonnes of CO2 every year. The wind farm will be installed on a 150 sq mile site and built in two phases. Phase One, planned to be complete in 2012, will cover 60 sq miles and include 175 turbines with a combined capacity of 630MW. If approved, the second phase would add a further 100 turbines and boost capacity to 1,000MW.

The project’s partners are Danish business DONG Energy (50 per cent), global energy supplier E.ON (30 per cent) and Masdar (20 per cent), an energy firm based in Abu Dhabi.