Bałtyk 2 and 3: landfall drilling complete, shore ready for export cables

A kilometre beneath the dunes, without an open trench

The scope covered four bores drilled using HDD (horizontal directional drilling), each roughly one kilometre long. Casing pipes 71 cm in diameter, made of a high-strength material, were laid inside the resulting underground corridors; the export cables that will connect the farms to the onshore transmission network are to be drawn through them.

The key advantage of the trenchless method was routing the crossing beneath the beach and the shoreline without disturbing the surface. That made it possible to protect the dunes and their ecosystem, a particularly sensitive feature along this stretch of coast, and usually one of the hardest to reconcile with construction work. The drilling was carried out by the engineering firm Hanab.

The bore itself, however, is only part of the puzzle. As the investors point out, building the connection infrastructure for offshore wind farms calls for precise planning, technology matched to the local geology, and tight coordination of works running in parallel on land and at sea.

A Polish contractor in a role that barely existed a few years ago

And it is the marine side of the operation that is most interesting here from the point of view of Polish industry. The work from the water was handled by the Polish company MAG Offshore. Its responsibilities included the marine logistics of the kilometre-plus casing pipes, towing the work pontoon fitted with a 100-tonne crane, coordinating several vessels, and supporting the installation works.

The involvement of a Polish contractor in such a demanding task illustrates a process still taking shape in the country, the build-up of a local supply chain for offshore wind and the strengthening of competencies that simply did not exist on the Polish market a few years ago. The first Baltic farms, such as Bałtyk 2 and 3, are becoming the driving force behind an entirely new branch of the maritime industry.

One hundred turbines, 1.44 GW and a 2027 deadline

The Bałtyk 2 and Bałtyk 3 farms, developed jointly by Norway's Equinor and Poland's Polenergia, are to comprise a combined 100 wind turbines standing 260 metres tall. Their capacity is expected to reach 1.44 GW, enough, according to the investors, to match the demand of roughly two million households.

Under the current schedule, the first power from both farms is due to flow into the national grid as early as 2027, with full commercial operation planned for 2028. Bałtyk 2 and 3 form part of a wider Equinor–Polenergia portfolio in the Baltic that also includes the Bałtyk 1 project, with combined capacity approaching 3 GW.

Completing the landfall drilling moves the project a step closer to the point where Polish offshore energy will be discussed not in terms of plans, but of megawatts actually feeding the grid.