North Sea Farmers Offshore Test Site now has a 500 m safety zone
2024-05-17
Working offshore means that safety is the number one priority 👨🔧 🌊 . Now the North Sea Farmers Offshore Test Site (OTS) - located 12km off the coast of Scheveningen and the largest offshore test site in Europe - has taken a leap forward in safety! The new safety zone will mean extra protection for innovation pilots on the OTS as well as ship traffic on the North Sea.
At each corner of the site there used to be a Cardinal buoy, which indicated how to sail past the OTS, theoretically close to all kinds of test structures. Rijkswaterstaat recently has removed these cardinal buoys and placed special markings 500 metres further out. Before, Royal Dirkzwager, who is in charge of the 24/7 surveillance, would alert sailors via VHF if they came too close to the OTS. Now, they will call you at least 500 metres earlier to prevent you entering the safety zone by accident. So, take care because as soon as you enter the safety zone, the Public Prosecutor (Het openbaar ministerie) could decide to prosecute you as trespassing vessel.
⛵ Some sailors may find this annoying and wonder why? Isn't it just a few lines of seaweed in the OTS? Absolutely not! The North Sea Farmers OTS is a unique site in the North Sea where cutting-edge technologies are being tested by highly innovative companies and initiatives. Such as nature restoration structures by De Rijke Noordzee, floating solar from Oceans of Energy and very soon SolarDuck will install their Merganser project. This will be a floating solar farm structure mounted on columns that will reach for the sky at 10 metres above the sea surface. So, this safety zone is very important. Not only to protect the pilot structures we host but also to ensure a safe passage of the OTS by all vessels.
If you have questions, or want to test your cutting edge technology on the North Sea Farmers Offshore Test Site, feel free to reach out to our OTS Manager Lennard Ypma or visit https://lnkd.in/ek-bsMvx for more information.
Other future users of the North Sea Farmers OTS are: Dutch Wave Power and Weco - the Wave Energy Collective. Last but not least, we're working on a electrical grid connection for the OTS in collaboration with Campusatsea - we're still looking for partners on this so contact us if you want to know more.
The coordinates of the vertices of the outer boundary of the safety zone of the North Sea Farmers OTS can be found in the Staatscourant: https://lnkd.in/eXPx9x4K
